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William  Ewart  Gladstone. 


Standard  American  Edition 


LIFE  AND  TIMES 


OF 


William  E.Gladstone 

Bn  Hccount  of 

His  Ancestry  and  Boyhood 
His  Career  at  Eton  and  Oxford 
His  Entrance  into  Public  Life 
His  Rise  to  Leadership  and  Fame 
His  Genius  as  Statesman  and  Author 
AND  His  Influence  on  the  Progress  of 
The  Nineteenth  Century 

BY  John  Clark  Ridpath 

AUTHOR  OF 

"Great  races  of  Mankind,"  "CvcLOPytDiA  of  Universal  History/'  "History  of  the 

United  States,"  Etc.,  Etc 


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New  York 
PETER   FENELON   COLLIER,  PUBLISHER 


Copyright,  1898,  by 
New  Yokk. 


<3h,st.r 


(See  p.  6i8.) 


THE   LIBRARY 
UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 
,«,^,    SANTA  BAEBARA 


PREFACE. 


O  interpret  the  life  of  a  great  historical  personage  is  not  an  easy  task. 
In, proportion  as  the  given  career  has  intertwined  itself  with  the 
lines  of  general  causation  and  made  itself  a  brilliant  thread  in  the 
history  of  an  epoch,  by  so  much  the  more  is  the  interpretation  of 
that  career  made  difficult.  The  highest  lives  are  closest  to  the 
Universal  Flow,  and  to  know  them  and  translate  them  into  language  involves  a 
knowledge  of  the  profound  sources  and  tendencies  of  the  whole  human  drama. 
The  small  life  is  inconspicuous  and  is  causative  of  little ;  the  great  life  is  con- 
spicuous and  causative  of  much. 

The  life  of  the  great  man  is  not  a  biography,  but  ahistor}' .  His  purposes  and 
actions  tend  constantly  to  the  impersonal.  In  such  a  life  there  is  always  a  star- 
tling paradox ;  for  while  its  individuality  becomes  more  and  more  intense,  its 
personality  becomes  less  and  less  distinct.  The  unity  of  the  man,  strengthened 
more  and  more  by  the  conflicts  through  which  he  passes,  is  strongly  set  upon  a 
disk  which  widens  ever,  like  the  penumbra  of  a  star,  until  it  covers  the  firma- 
ment. 

By  the  common  consent  of  men  and  nations  William  Ewart  Gladstone  has 
been  a  great  figure,  a  powerful  personage,  in  the  history  of  our  times.  For  quite 
half  a  century  his  name  has  been  heard.  At  the  date  of  his  death  it  was  fully 
sixty  years  since  his  first  book  was  brilliantly  and  adversely  reviewed  by  the 
ablest  critic  and  essayist  of  England.  At  times  the  fame  of  Gladstone  has 
sounded  across  seas  and  continents,  rising  above  the  historical  roar  and  clamor 
of  the  Western  nations. 

For  more  than  threescore  years  Gladstone  sat  in  the  British  House  of  Com- 
mons. We  think  that  no  other  statesman  of  ancient  or  modern  times  continued 
for  such  an  incredible  period  to  participate  actively  in  the  legislation  of  his 
countr3^  Certainly  no  other  of  any  age  or  nation  retired  more  honorably  from 
the  arena  in  which  he  had  so  long  performed  a  conspicuous  part. 

It  is  my  purpose  in  this  volume  to  present  for  American  readers  a  compara- 
tively full  account  of  the  Life  and  Times  of  William  E.  Gladstone.  To  write 
his  life  has  involved  to  a  considerable  extent  a  recital  of  the  history  of  his  times. 
As  soon  as  Gladstone  appeared  in  the  British  Cabinet  he  began  to  influence  and 

7 


8  PREFACE. 

even  to  direct  public  affairs.  As  early  as  1853,  when,  as  Chancellor  of  the  Ex- 
chequer in  the  ministry  of  the  Earl  of  Aberdeen,  he  found  himself  under  the 
responsibility  of  supplying  the  resources  with  which  to  support  an  army  and  a 
navy  in  the  Black  Sea  during  the  Crimean  War,  he  influenced  conspicuously  the 
direction  of  events.  More  and  more  this  influence  broadened  and  deepened,  until 
in  several  crises  of  English  history  he  was  actually  the  determining  force ;  that 
is,  he  was  the  individual  consciousness  by  the  agency  of  which  History  deter- 
mined what  should  and  what  should  not  be  in  the  current  evolution  of  English 
nationality.   • 

To  delineate  this  life  succinctly  and  adequately  in  its  relation  with  the  general 
movement  in  the  last  half  of  the  nineteenth  century  has  been  my  duty.  To 
delineate  it  in  a  manner  suited  to  the  easy  apprehension  of  American  readers 
has  also  been  my  offlce  and  desire.  To  this  end  I  have  considered,  first,  what 
may  be  called  a  section  of  general  history  at  the  date  of  Gladstone's  birth ;  also 
the  ancestral  conditions  and  forces  which  brought  him  forth.  The  manner  of 
life  which  prevailed  in  his  boyhood  and  in  his  school  days  at  Eton  I  have  tried 
to  describe.  It  has  been  my  purpose,  wherever  this  life  of  Gladstone  has  touched 
the  institutions  of  his  times,  to  interpret  them  also.  This  plan  has  led  to  the  pres- 
entation of  sketches  of  Eton  School  and  Oxford  University,  at  which  seats  of 
discipline  and  learning  the  young  Gladstone  was  trained  for  the  duties  of  life. 
In  his  going  forth  for  a  brief  sojourn  in  the  south  of  Europe  the  same  method 
of  noting  the  social  and  political  conditions  through  which  he  passed  has  been 
adopted.  It  was  on  the  circuit  of  Italy  that  the  young  publicist — merchant  and 
politician  alike  by  lineage  and  environment — came  into  contact  with  the  Nea- 
politan prisons  and  first  revealed  himself  as  a  public  man  to  the  consciousness  of 
his  countrymen. 

In  this  connection  I  shall  only  indicate  in  briefest  outline  the  course  of  Glad- 
stone's life  from  the  beginning  of  his  public  career  to  the  sunset  of  his  days. 
The  year  1832  sees  him,  a  young  man  only  twenty-three  years  of  age,  entering 
the  House  of  Commons.  He  goes  into  that  arena  as  a  Tory,  a  Conservative.  He 
has  for  his  patron  the  Duke  of  Newcastle,  He  begins  by  defending  social  and 
political  abuses.  He  becomes  the  apologist  of  Negro  slavery,  for  his  father  had 
sugar  plantations  in  the  West  Indies,  and  his  father  was  "  an  honorable  man." 

The  younger  Gladstone  makes  his  way  under  this  banner  for  several  sessions. 
The  year  1838  witnesses  his  apparition  as  an  author.  He  writes  T]ie  State  in 
its  Relations  tvith  the  Church,  and  gets  therefor  a  merited  castigation  at  the  hands 
of  Macaulay.  By  this  time  the  ancient  Oxford  notes  her  son  with  pride.  In 
1847  he  becomes  her  representative  in  the  House  of  Commons.  And  this 
relation  he  holds  for  eighteen  years.     During  this  period  Gladstone  became  an 


rUKFACE.  9 

historical  personage.  First  he  was  Vice-President  and  then  President  of  the  Board 
of  Trade.  In  1845  he  actually  resigned  from  the  British  ministry  on  account  of 
a  conscientious  scruple !  Then  he  became  Secretary  of  State  for  the  Colonies. 
At  that  epoch  a  man  with  a  conscience  was  still  available ! 

It  was  in  the  interval  between  1846  and  1852  that  Gladstone  showed  the  first 
unmistakable  signs  of  a  purpose  to  desert  the  tents  of  the  Tories.  His  liberalism 
came  on  like  a  dawn  tending"  to  sunrise.  Meanwhile,  in  1852,  he  accepted  the 
place  of  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer  in  the  ministry  of  Aberdeen.  From  Con- 
servatism he  had  passed  by  the  way  of  Peelism  near  the  mouth  of  the  cave  of 
Adullam — but  had  not  entered.  After  the  fall  of  Aberdeen  he  continued  in 
office  under  Palmerston  for  a  short  season,  and  then  resigned.  In  the  years 
1858-59  he  became  Special  Commissioner  of  Great  Britain  to  the  Ionian  Islands, 
and  in  this  office  he  secured  the  cession  of  the  islands  to  Greece.  By  this  time 
his  liberalism  had  become  so  pronounced  that  he  accepted  the  post  of  Chancellor 
of  the  Exchequer  under  Lord  Palmerston  and  Earl  Russell,  his  successor.  Now 
he  became  leader  of  the  House  of  Commons,  and  his  star  entered  the  ascendant. 

It  was  in  December  of  1868  that  Gladstone  became,  for  the  first  time.  Prime 
Minister  of  England.  His  first  term  in  this  office  continued  for  five  years  and 
two  months.  In  this  interval  the  Irish  Church  was  disestablished  and  the  Irish 
Land  Act  passed.  The  reaction  of  1874  carried  Gladstone  into  opposition.  In 
this  attitude  he  stood  for  six  years  in  gladiatorial  antagonism  to  his  great  rival, 
Benjamin  Disraeli.  Not  until  1880  did  the  reverse  tides  of  British  opinion  carry 
him  again  to  the  premiership  of  Great  Britain.  Then  came  the  Home  Rule 
agitation,  and  the  great  deeps  of  England  were  stirred;  and  after  the  victorious 
Midlothian  campaign  Gladstone  came  back  to  the  highest  office  in  the  gift  of  the 
British  nation. 

For  five  years  the  Home  Rule  struggle  continued,  until  it  culminated  in  tem- 
porary defeat.  The  bill  which  Gladstone  had  prepared  with  so  much  skill  and 
defended  with  so  much  eloquence,  at  last  reached  the  crisis  of  a  vote,  and  failed 
in  the  very  hands  of  its  author.  Then  there  was  a  brief  appeal  to  the  country, 
then  a  third  brief  interval  in  the  office  of  Prime  Minister,  extending  from  February 
to  July,  1886.  Then  the  crisis  broke,  and  Gladstone  went  out  of  office  for  an- 
other period  of  six  years.     This  was  the  epoch  of  the  Salisbury  ascendenc3^ 

But  the  Home  Rule  spirit  would  not  down.  The  tide  rises  again  and  roars 
along  the  shore.  In  1892  Gladstone,  being  already  in  his  eighty-third  year,  is  for 
i\iefo7irth  time  summoned  by  the  Queen  to  conduct  her  government.  Now  by  a 
victorious  battle  shall  Home  Rule  be  accomplished.  In  1893  the  Prime  Minis- 
ter brings  in  his  bill,  and  in  the  face  of  all  manner  of  opposition  carries  it  through 
the  House  of  Commons.     For  the  hour  it  appears  that  Ireland  shall  be  lifted  into 


lO 


PREFACE. 


a  new  relation  with  the  British  empire  and  with  the  world.  But  the  House  of 
Lords,  that  dilapidated  roost  for  the  croaking  birds  of  the  Middle  Ages,  comes  to 
the  rescue  of  the  Past,  and  the  bill  for  the  Home  Rule  of  Ireland  is   negatived. 

Thus  near  the  end  of  his  career,  in  1894,  William  E.  Gladstone  was  obliged 
to  give  over  the  project  of  Home  Rule,  and  presently  to  retire  from  the  arena  in 
which  he  had  so  long  been  the  foremost  actor.  In  doing  so  he  shook  his  hand  in 
defiance  not  only  at  the  House  of  Lords,  but  at  the  whole  system  of  aristocratic 
organization  and  ancient  privilege  which  are  represented  by  that  House  and  held 
as  in  a  keep  unto  the  judgment  of  the  last  day. 

There  remains  only  the  period  of  the  Grand  Old  Man's  retirement  in  the 
halls  and  haunts  of  Hawarden.  Of  this  last  span  of  a  heroic  career  the  closing 
chapter  of  this  work  will  give  an  adequate  account.  The  closing  days  of  Glad- 
stone's life  were  hallowed  to  an  unusual  degree  by  the  sympathies  and  respect  of 
mankind.  The  eyes  of  the  world  long  rested  upon  him  as  one  of  the  noblest  off- 
spring of  a  great  century.  His  tottering  step  was  marked.  The  slow  incoming 
of  decrepitude,  the  deepening  wrinkles  on  the  furrowed  face — these  were  recorded 
in  the  journalism  of  all  nations. 

It  is  the  story  of  this  life,  considered  in  its  historical  relations,  which  I  have 
sought  to  delineate  in  the  following  pages.  I  beg  leave  to  commend  the  recital 
to  the  consideration  of  my  countrymen ;   for  it  is  full  of  interest  and  inspiration. 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER  I. 
The  Year  1809. 
Conditions  of  Passage  in  1809 — State  of  War  and  Civil  Service  in  England — Aerial  Navigation — Industrial 
Conditions — State  of  Inquiry — Geology  in  Particular — Astronomical  Knowledge — Constitution  of  Nature — 
Davy  and  Herschel — Status  of  Slavery  and  the  Slave  Trade — Servitude  of  Woman — Transit  of  Napoleon  the 
Great — Ebb  and  Flow  of  Political  Conditions  in  America  and  France — Ascendency  of  the  Novi  Homines — Clash 
of  British  and  Gallic  Sympathies  in  America — Personnel  of  Leadership  in  the  United  States — What  Bonaparte 
was  Doing — The  Present  Work  a  Life  and  a  History — Coincident  Avatar  of  Darwin  and  Lincoln — Tennyson  and 
Poe — Mendelssohn — All  These  the  OfTspring  of  Revolution,       .--...  25-29 

CHAPTER    II. 

Ancestry  and  Boyhood. 
Primitive  .Seat  of  the  Gladstone  Stock — Artliurshiel — The  Old  Gledstanes — Meaning  and  Transformation  of 
the  Name — William  Gladstane — John — He  of  Mid-Toftcombs — Thomas  Gladstone — Coming  of  the  Gladstonian 
Character — Apparition  of  the  Commercial  Instinct — Thomas  Gladstone  and  Helen  Neilson — John  Gladstone,  the 
Scotch  Englishman — Time  of  his  Birth — How  He  Founded  the  Family — His  Relations  with  Corrie — His  First 
Commercial  Exploit — Success  of  his  American  Adventure — "Corrie,  Gladstone,  and  Bradshaw  " — John  Gladstone 
and  Company — President  of  the  West  India  Association — Liverpool  Becomes  the  Gladstonian  Seat — Growth  of 
the  Family — Commercial  Conditions  at  the  Time  of  the  Great  One's  Birth — Sir  John  Gladstone  in  Politics — His 
Relations  with  Canning  and  Peel — Birth  of  William  Ewart — Destinies  of  his  Brothers  and  Sisters — How  the  Poor 
are  Hampered  in  England — And  liow  the  Rich  Emerge — Mythical  Strains  of  Noble  Blood  in  the  Gladstone — 
Princely  Folk  Mixed  in  with  the  Burgher — Gladstone  Born  in  a  Crisis — His  Star  the  Planet  of  Commerce  and 
Politics — Reaction  of  the  Environment — Incidents  of  William  Ewart's  First  Years — Touch  of  Hannah  More — He 
Hears  Great  Guns  at  Edinburgh — Witnesses  the  Uproar  of  Victory  in  Liverpool — Remembers  Canning — Other 
Platitudes  of  Childhood — Age  of  Twelve — Impact  of  Scotch  Discipline — Robustness  of  the  Burgher  Boy — Deriva- 
tion of  Sentiments — Primary  Studies — Sir  John  Discovers  Possibilities — We  Must  Educate,  -  30-37 

CHAPTER  III. 
At  Eton  and  Oxford. 
Crisis  in  1821 — Choice  of  Eton — Story  of  that  School  from  Heniy  VI — Tiie  Town  of  Eton — Purposes  of  King 
Henry — Sketch  of  the  Youth  Gladstone — The  Curriculum  to  which  He  was  Exposed — Comparisons  of  Then  and 
Now — Philosophical  View  of  Collegiate  Training  at  the  Close  of  the  First  Quarter  of  Our  Century — Nature  of 
Subcolleges  in  Great  Britain — Winchester  and  Westminster  Schools — Sketch  of  the  "  Royal  School"  of  Eton  — 
Predominance  of  the  Greek  and  Latin  Languages — Class  Divisions  of  the  School — List  of  Text-books — Absence 
of  Natural  Science  and  Mathematics — Critique  from  the  Edinburgh  Review — Quantum  of  Greek  and  Latin 
Readings — Quality  of  the  Texts — Authors  specially  Considered — Merits  of  Fagging  and  Flogging — Seniority 
being  Substituted  for  Merit — Posterior  Compulsion — The  Head  Master  as  a  Flogger — How  Wellington  Got  his 
Courage — Introduction  of  Gladstone  to  this  Discipline — Further  Criticism  of  the  Edinburgh  Review — Athletic 
Sports  at  Eton — The  Etonian  Periodicals — Gladstone  Juventis  Dips  his  Pen — He  Becomes  an  Able  Editor — The 
Eton  Miscellany  Flourishes — Contributors  thereto — Gladstone  and  Hallam  Freres — How  They  Hurled  their  Lances 
— First  Noni  de  Plume — Principia  of  the  Gladstonian  Style — His  "View  of  Lethe" — Phases  of  Poetical  Adoles- 
cence— The  Youth's  Vision  of  the  Drowning  Immortals — Narrow  Range  of  Things  Taught — The  Gladstonian 
Epic  of  the  Lion  Heart — Increase  of  Mental  Activity — Glimpses  of  Ambition  in  the  Miscellany — Foreshadowings 
of  Parliament — George  Canning  as  an  Ideal — How  the  Youth  Became  a  Tory — Death  of  Canning — Other  Political 
Heroes  of  the  Day — Panegyric  on  Canning — Development  of  the  Gladstonian  Style — General  Results  of  the 
Youth's  Life  at  Eton — The  Religious  Bent — Gladstone  as  a  Student  under  Dr.  Turner — Choice  of  Oxford  and 
Motives  of  the  Choosing — Christchurch  College  in  Particular — A  Student  "on  the  Foundation" — Larger  Field 
of  Scholastic  Study  Opens — Beginning  as  an  Oxonian — The  Debating  Society — Changed  and  Changing  Condi- 
tions of  that  Institution — Tlie  Young  Man  as  a  Champion,  of  Tory  Orthodoxy — Epoch  of  Reform — What  the 
Student  Debate  Signifies — Cambridge  and  Oxford  Divide  on  Shelley  and  Byron — Memorable  Debate  on  that  Sub- 
ject— Preponderance  of  Argument  on  Gladstone's  Side  in  the  Combat — He  Rises  to  Distinction  in  the  Union — 
Question  of  the  Disal)ilities  of  the  Jews — Resolution  against  tlie  Earl  Grey  Ministry — Abolition  of  Slavery  in  the 
West  Indies  — Gladstone  on  the  Wrong  Side — Leaders  and  Progress  of  Abolitionism — Position  of  Gladstone  the 
Elder — Therefore  Are  We  Opposed  to  Abolition — The  Debate  on  the  Oxonian  Union — Philosophy  of  Gladstone's 
Progress — How  He  was  Entangled  on  the  Slaveiy  Question — He  Comes  to  his  Examinations — A  "  Double  First  " 
— Afterviews  and  Retrospect  of  Oxford — His  Address  to  the  Palmerston  Club,  -  -  -  38-57 

I  I 


12  CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER  IV. 
Travel  and  Entrance  into  Parliament. 
Project  of  Going  Abroad — Unfruitfuliiess  of  the  First  Journey  to  Italy — Better  Results  Afterward — The  Visit 
to  Sicily — Moods  of  ^tna  and  Vesuvius — Gladstone's  Description  of  the  Former  and  the  Surrounding  Landscape 
— His  Magniloquent  Style — Glimpses  of  his  Dream — By  Way  of  Catania  to  the  Summit — A  Piece  of  Description — 
How  a  Man  may  Prefer  an  Hexameter  to  a  Volcano — Gladstone  not  a  Great  Traveler — The  Political  Arena  more 
Attractive  than  Nature — We  will  Stand  for  Parliament — General  Sketch  of  Conditions  in  1S32 — Transit  oi 
George  IV  and  William  IV — Question  of  Reforming  the  House  of  Commons — The  Rotten  Boroughs — The  Agita- 
tion Shakes  Great  Britain — The  Slavery  Issue  and  Disabilities  of  the  Jews — The  Disappointing  Election  of  1S32 
— Gladstone  Promoted  by  the  Duke  of  Newcastle — Style  of  an  English  Election — Opponents  of  Mr.  Gladstone  and 
Principles  of  Each — Appearance  of  the  Neophyte  on  the  Hustings — Contest  of  the  Blue  Club  with  the  Red — The 
Young  Tory's  First  Political  Address — His  Proclamation  of  Principles — Labor  Should  be  Remunerated — Slavery 
Should  not  be  Abolished,  but  Mitigated — Scriptural  Justification  of  Servitude — Fitness  should  Precede  Emanci- 
pation— Rally  to  the  Ancient  Flag — No  Surprise  at  such  a  Delivery — Gladstone  the  Favorite — Contest  with 
Sergeant  Wilde  at  the  Hustings — A  Formal  Poll  Required — Scenes  on  Election  Day — Gladstone  is  Successful — 
Significance  of  the  Election — Bearing  of  the  Young  Member  from  Newark — Question  of  the  Press  Tax — The 
Chorus  of  Cheers  and  Hisses — Sayings  of  Scribblerus  Politicus — Counter  Eruptions  of  the  journal  and  the  Rtjlector 
— Argument  of  the  Latter — Suspicion  that  the  Duke  did  It — No  Aspersion  of  Gladstone's  Character,     -         5S-72 

CHAPTER  V. 
First  Passages  in  the  House  of  Commons. 
Point  of  Superiority  of  the  British  Method  over  that  of  Congress — How  Reform  Lags  in  Great  Britain — East 
India  Company  and  Slavery  in  West  Indies  the  Two  Bugbears — Condition  of  Aflairs  in  Trinidad  and  Jamaica — 
John  Gladstone's  Estate  in  Demarara — Beginning  of  Debate  on  Abolition — Speech  of  Lord  Howick — Gladstone's 
Maiden  Effort — His  Defense  of  his  Father — His  Second  Address  before  the  House — His  Plea  for  Gradual 
Emancipation — He  Favors  Temporizing — The  Planters  Must  be  Protected — Debate  Results  in  Abolition  with 
Compensation — The  Borough  of  Liverpool  to  be  Investigated — Political  Valaeof  Ten  Pounds  Sterling — Liverpool 
wot  particularly  Corrupt — The  Church  Temporalities  Bill — Measure  Opposed  by  Gladstone — We  will  Defend  the 
Irish  Church — There  may  be  Abuses,  but  Let  Us  Correct  them  Gently — Ought  Students  to  Subscribe  to  the 
Thirty-nine  Articles  ? — Gladstone  Thinks  it  Should  be  Done  Pro  Forma — He  Begins  to  Lead  the  Tories — Applause 
in  Newark — Fall  of  the  Melbourne  Ministry — Peel  Calls  Gladstone — Parliamentary  Method  with  Ministers  Elect 
— Gladstone's  Appeal  to  Newark — He  has  Sergeant  Wilde  for  a  Colleague — Popularity  of  the  Junior  Lord  of  the 
Treasury — His  Account  of  his  Meeting  with  Lord  Aberdeen — Question  of  Church  and  State  Arises — Attitude  of 
Gladstone  thereto — The  Reform  Act  is  Accepted — Sir  Robert  Appoints  Gladstone  Under  Secretary  for  the  Col- 
onies— His  First  Bill — Overthrow  of  the  Peel  Ministry — Nature  of  Action  ajid  Reaction  in  Great  Britain — 
Gladstone's  Speech  on  the  Church  Question — Adoption  of  Russell's  Resolution — Political  Rancor  in  Melbourne 
Ministry — Negro  Apprenticeship  in  the  West  Indies — The  Buxton  Resolution — Gladstone  Speaks  Against  It — 
The  Canadian  Commotion  Reaches  the  liouse  of  Commons — The  Question  at  Issue — Policy  of  Lord  Durham  as 
Governor  General — Lord  Russell's  Scheme — Gladstone  Speaks  in  Support  Thereof — The  Question  of  1S37 — How 
Shall  We  Manage  the  Church  Estates? — Opposition  of  Sir  Robert  Peel  to  the  Ministerial  Measure — Rudiments 
of  The  State  in  its  Relation  -with  the  Church — Gladstone's  First  Great  Oration,  -  -  -  IZ'^l 

CHAPTER  VI. 

Rising  to  Leadership. 
Accession  of  Victoria  to  the  Throne — The  New  Parliament — Gladstone  again  Stands  for  Newark — Question 
of  Going  to  Manchester — Gladstone's  Communication  to  the  Mercury — The  Shibboleth  of  "  Church  and  State  " — 
A  Minority  Candidate  at  the  Manchester  Poll — The  Reception  at  Bush  Inn — Some  Political  Wit — Beginning  of 
Gladstone's  Ascendency — The  Young  Queen's  Speech — The  Canadian  Imbroglio  again — Gladstone's  Speech  on 
Lord  Russell's  Measure — Brougham  Proposes  the  Abolition  of  Negro  Apprenticeship — Stories  of  Abuses  on  the 
Plantation — Strickland's  Resolution  in  the  Commons — Gladstone  Speaks  in  Opposition  ther-eto — His  Defense  of 
Apprenticeship — His  Father's  Honor  and  his  Own  Involved — Apprenticeship  a  Part  of  the  Compensation  to  the 
Slaveholders — Gladstone  Describes  the  Situation  in  the  West  Indies — He  Charges  Inconsistency  on  Strickland — 
He  Strikes  a  Blow  at  Negro  Slavery  in  America — He  Calls  for  Justice — Defeat  of  the  Strickland  Resolution — 
Gladstone's  Speech  Praised  by  the  Times — Rejoicing  of  the  Conservatives — Summary  of  Gladstone's  Status  in 
1S38 — Paragraph  from  the  British  Senate — A  Question  of  Subtraction — A  Description  of  Gladstone's  Style — His 
Habit  and  Person — His  Manner  in  Public  Speech — Further  Agitation  on  the  Question  of  Negro  Apprenliceshiii — 
Gladstone's  Position  on  the  Subject — Seeking  for  a  Better  System  of  Education — Awakening  of  Religious  Preju- 
dices— Lord  Morpeth's  Speech  on  the  Education  Bill — Gladstone's  Work  on  the  State  and  Church  Becomes  a 
Handbook — Speeches  of  O'Connell  and  Ashley— Gladstone's  Reply  to  the  Former — He  Enlarges  upon  tlie  Sub- 


CONTENTS.  13 

'  ject  before  the  Commons  and  Reduces  the  Governmental  Majority — Question  of  Admitting  the  Jews  to  Educa- 
tional Privileges — Lord  Macaulay's  Speech — The  Chinese  Question  Obtrudes  Itself — What  the  Question  Involved 
— Gladstone's  Passage  with  Sir  James  Graham — Narrow  Margin  for  Sir  James's  Resolution — Decline  of  the  Mel- 
bourne Ministry — Dissolution  of  Parliament  and  Appeal  to  the  Country — The  Liberak  Go  to  the  Wall — Sir 
Robert  Peel  Becomes  Prime  Minister — Gladstone  Vice  Plesident  of  the  Board,  ...  88-104 

CHAPTER  VII. 
Marriage  and  First  Appearance  in  Literature. 
Gladstone  Marries  Catherine  Glynne — The  Hawarden  Estate — The  Glynne  Family — Sir  James  Glynne  in 
Particular — The  Castle  and  the  Park — Gladstone  Publishes  The  State  in  its  Relations  -cvith  the  Church — Preceding 
Works  on  the  same  Subject — Gladstone's  Dissatisfaction  with  the  Question  as  Stated — Macaulay  Reviews  the 
Work — His  Famous  P^irst  Paragraph — Fundamental  Proposition  of  Gladstone's  Book — The  Author's  Thesis  to 
Establish  the  Rightfulness  of  State  Government  over  Religious  Institutions — His  Argument  to  Prove  as  Mucli — 
The  Nation  Has  a  Personality — A  Personality  Should  be  Religious — Religion  Implies  a  Government — The  Gov- 
erning Control  Must  be  by  the  Secular  Body — Macaulay's  Answer  to  these  Propositions — He  Employs  the  Keductio 
ad  AbstirdiDH — Further  Destruction  of  the  Gladstone  Propositions — The  Assumptions  of  the  Author  Do  not  Bear 
the  Tests  of  Logic — The  Critic's  Citation  of  the  Battle  of  Blenheim — Men  of  Different  Faiths  May  Unite  in  Com- 
mon Purposes  without  Governmental  Control — Destruction  of  Gladstone's  Argument  for  the  Exdusicn  cvf  Dis- 
senters^— How  the  Question  Appears  in  the  Prospect — Correspondence  of  Gladstone  with  his  Critic — Admirable 
Good  Temper  Displayed  by  Both — The  Author's  Carl  ton-Gardens  Letter — Macaulay's  Reply — Pleasure  of  Oxford 
at  the  Work  of  her  Son — Position  Taken  by  the  Qnarterly  Review — W^hat  the  Present  may  Learn  out  of  Glad- 
stone's Book — His  Defense  of  the  Irish  Clmrch  Establishment — Inconsistency  of  the  Argument  with  his  Sabse- 
quent  Work  and  Teaching — The  Book  Puts  Gladstone  on  the  Defensive — How  He  Parries  the  Thnist — The 
Critics  Bear  Hard  upon  Him — What  He  Says  in  a  Chapter  of  Autobiography — His  Apology — WTiat  Modified 
ills  0]"iinions — The  Work  Increases  the  Estimate  in  which  He  is  Held  by  the  Public,  -  -  105-124 

CHAPTER  VIII. 
The  Free-trade  Tr.ajnsformation. 
Conditions  Present  at  the  Beginning  of  the  Reign  of  Victoria — ^Accession  of  the  Melbourne  Ministiy — Char- 
acter of  Lord  Melbourne — The  Nation  Turns  against  his  Administration — Sir  Robert  Peel  Succeeds  Him — The 
Corn  Law  Question — History  of  that  Legislation. — Successive  Stages  in  its  Development — Sir  Robert  Proposes  a 
New  Scale  of  Duties — The  Crisis  Precipitated — Lord  Russell's  Amendment — Gladstone's  Position  on  the  Question 
— Sir  Robert's  Misrepresentation* — Necessity  of  Doing  Something — An  Act  to  Tax  Incomes — The  Situation  a 
Counterpart  to  that  of  the  United  States  in  1886 — The  Long  Debate — Gladstone  Prolific  in  Speeches — Public 
Opinion  against  the  Corn  Laws- — Tendency  to  Free  Trade — Debate  on  the  Queen's  Speech — Gladstone's  Plea  for 
Moderation — The  Minister  Triumphs — Beginning  of  the  Chartist  Agitation — Principles  of  the  People's  Charter — 
Reasonableness  of  the  Same — Work  of  the  Agitators — Marriage  of  the  Queen — Character  of  the  Priuce  Consort — 
The  Royal  Family — Gladstone  Defends  the  Sugar  Duty — He  Favors  Free  Exportation  of  Machinery — His  Views 
Begin  to  Enlarge — His  Address  before  the  Collegiate  Institution — His  Skill  in  Commercial  Questions — flis,  Bill 
for  the  Regulation  of  Railway  Faxes — The  Companies  against  Him — Question  of  the  Unitarian  Properties— Glad- 
stone's Advocacy  of  the  Unitarian  Right  to  Hold — Question  of  Voting  Money  to  the  College  of  Maynooth. — Char- 
acter of  the  Institution — The  Maynooth  Improvement  Bill — Gladstone,  between  Two  Fires,  Resigns — His 
Motives  for  Supporting  the  Maynooth  Bill — His  Argument — He  Sets  forth  the  Philosophy  of  the  Situation — 
His  Plea  for  Justice  to  the  Irish  People — Analysis  of  the  Vote — Sir  James  Graham's  Bill  for  Education  iia 
Ireland— Gladstone's  Debate  with  Inglis  on  the  Question — Other  Great  Issues  to  be  Considered — Gladstone's 
Pamphlet,  entitled  Remarks,  etc. — His  Drift  on  the  Free-trade  Current — The  Crisis  of  1845 — Proposition  to  Abolish 
the  Corn  Laws  in  toto — Overthrow  of  the  Peel  Ministry — ^Accession  of  Lord  Russell— Gladstone  as  Colonial  Sec- 
retary— He  Bids  Farewell  to  Newark — Explanation  of  his  Motives — Consistency  Giving  Way  before  Hunger 

Sudden  Apparition  of  Disraeli — His  Attack  on  Sir  Robert — Great  Britain  on  the  Highroad  to  Free  Trade — The 
Corn  Laws  are  Abolished  in  toto,         --....._.  125-14S 

CHAPTER  IX. 
Representative  of  O.xford  University. 
Downfall  of  the  Peel  Ministry — Gladstone  Goes  with  It— He  Presents  Himself  to  Oxford — His  Opponent — 
Gladstone's  Address — He  Admits  Changes  of  Opinion — He  Discusses  the  Irish  Question — Oxford  Hard  to  Satisfy 
— Position  Taken  by  Gladstone's  Advocates — He  is  Elected — Question  of  Enlarging  the  Rights  of  the  Jews — The 
Baron  Rothschild  is  Elected  to  tlie  House  of  Commons — How  Could  He  Qualify  ?— Lord  Russell  Seeks  to  Make  a 
Way — If  a  Catholic,  Why  Not  a  Jew? — Gladstone  Speaks  in  Favor  of  Admission — Points  of  his  Argument — 
Admission  to  Citizen.ship  Carries  Eligibility — The  Dangerous  Ground  on  Which  Gladstone  Stood^ — The  Chartist 
Agitation  Rises  Again — Mass  Meetings,  Bonfires,  and  Outbreaks — The  Assembly  in  Kensington  Common — The 


14  CONTENTS. 

Maintenance  of  Authority — Gladstone  and  Louis  Napoleon  in  the  same  Role — Lord  Russell  Confronted  with  a 
Deficit — Question  of  Taxing  Incomes — Hot  Debate  on  the  Subject — Disraeli's  Charge  on  the  Government — Glad- 
stone Defends  his  Chief— He  Appeals  to  Statistics — Necessity  of  Passing  the  Income  Tax — Effect  of  Pacific  Utter- 
ances— Distracted  Condition  in  Europe — England  Holds  on  her  Way  Unmoved — She  Will  Not  Revolutionize — 
Emergence  of  Two  Great  Characters — Disraeli  and  his  Fatal  Thrust— Question  of  the  Navigation  Laws — Glad- 
stone Essays  the  Defense  of  the  Peel  Ministry — His  Cautious  Speech  on  the  Navigation  Bill— Strong  Trend  to- 
ward Absolute  Free  Trade — His  Speech  on  the  Labouchere  Act — Report  of  the  Commission  on  Customs — Disraeli 
on  the  Day  of  Dupes — Gladstone  Parries  his  Rival's  Onset — The  Navigation  Act  is  Passed,  -  149-163 

CHAPTER  X. 

Beginnings  of  the  Church  Question. 
The  Religious  Aspect  Presents  Itself — Cardinal  Ferretti  Becomes  Pius  IX — His  Consultum — Question  of 
Establishing  Diplomatic  Relations  with  Rome — Gladstone  Speaks  against  this  Policy — Hint  of  a  Future  Purpose 
— "  On  the  True  Faith  of  a  Christian  " — The  Poor  as  well  as  the  Rich  Should  Have  Equal  Religious  Privileges — 
No  Sittings  No  Rates,  Should  be  the  Rule — Alarming  Condition  in  Canada — How  to  Suppress  the  Rebellion — 
Gladstone's  Position  on  the  Subject — Question  of  a  General  Colonial  Reform — Issue  between  Gladstone  and 
Roebuck — Molesworth's  Contention — Hume's  Policy — Last  Days  of  the  Ancient  Ecclesiasticism — Question  of 
Marrying  the  Deceased  Wife's  Sister — Wortley's  Marriage  Bill — Gladstone's  Opposition  and  Arguments — His 
Conjunction  with  Disraeli — Principle  of  Laissfz  Faire  in  England  and  America — Disraeli  Appears  as  the  Living 
Voice  of  the  Landed  Aristocracy — Free  Trade  as  Related  to  Industrial  Distress — Analogy  of  Gladstone's  Position 
— Both  Leaders  Seek  to  Alleviate  the  Agricultural  Distress — Peril  of  the  Ministry — Lord  Russell's  Measure  for 
the  Government  of  the  Australian  Colonies — Gladstone's  Opposition  to  a  Single  House — Passage  of  the  Russell 
Bill — Suffering  of  British  Producers — The  Conservatives  Gain  an  Advantage  on  the  Sugar  Question — Shall  Sugar 
be  Protected  ? — Lord  Palmerston's  Contention — Question  of  the  Universities  Again — Gladstone's  Speech  on  the 
Subject — What  Came  of  the  Burning  of  Judas  Iscariot — The  Thrifty  Don  Pacifico — Palmerston  Put  on  the  Defen- 
sive— Sir  Robert  Peel's  Speech  against  the  Ministry — Gladstone's  Argument  on  Don  Pacifico — He  Criticises  Lord 
Palmerston — He  Points  Out  the  Besetting  Sin  of  Englishmen — An  Appeal  Lies  to  the  People — View  of  Interna- 
tional Comity — The  Government  is  Sustained — Death  of  Sir  Robert  Peel — Where  Will  Gladstone  Go?  -    164-179 

CHAPTER  XL 
First  International  Episode. 
Gladstone  Begins  to  be  International — Declarations  of  Ferdinand  II  of  the  Two  Sicilies — Insurrections 
against  Him — His  Armies  Subdue  the  Revolt — Gladstone,  in  Naples,  Investigates  the  Prisons — His  Two  Letters 
to  the  Earl  of  Aberdeen — He  Disclaims  the  Purpose  of  Interference — Not  the  Administration  of  the  King,  but 
Cruelties  and  Outrages  under  Discussion — How  Justice  Had  been  Perverted  and  the  Judiciary  Corrupted  in 
Naples — "  The  Negation  of  God  Reduced  to  a  System  " — Numbers  in  the  Prisons — Character  of  the  Neapolitan 
Judiciary — Particular  Cases  of  Injustice  and  Cruelty — A  Sensation  Produced  in  England — Lord  Aberdeen  Appealed 
to — Character  of  Gladstone's  Charges — Severity  of  his  Arguments — He  Answers  the  Apologists  for  the  Govern- 
ment of  Naples — The  Case  of  Bolza — Citations  from  Farini  and  Bernetti— The  Administration  at  Rivarola — Edict 
of  the  Duke  of  Modena — Eflect  of  Gladstone's  Philippic — Official  Reply  of  the  Neapolitan  Government — Glad- 
stone's Rejoinder — De  Lacy  Evans's  Paper  in  the  Commons — Palmerston's  Embarrassment — His  Indorsement  of 
Gladstone — Far-reaching  Influence  of  the  Discussion — Condon's  Rant — Gladstone's  Third  Publication  on  the 
Subject — His  Unassailable  Position — Closing  Words  of  the  Controversy — Attitude  of  the  Government  of  Naples — 
Suffering  in  the  Dungeons — England  and  France  Withdraw  their  Representatives — The  Revolution  Brings 
Francis  to  his  Knees — Gladstone's  Translation  of  The  Roman  State — His  Criticisms  of  that  Work — The  Three 
Questions  Suggested — Gladstone's  Answers  Thereto — What  He  Perceived  in  this  Controversy,         -  180-195 

CHAPTER  XII. 
Durham  Letter  and  Ecclesiastical  Titles  Bill. 
Gladstone  is  No  Man's  Man — Transformation  of  Pius  IX — He  Seeks  to  Enlarge  the  Roman  Hierarchy — His 
Influence  Reaches  into  England — Russell's  Letter  to  Lord  Durham — Agricultural  Distress  in  England — Complaint 
of  the  Farmers — Disraeli  Discovers  his  Opportunity — His  Speech  on  the  Industrial  Depression — The  Govern- 
ment's Defense — Retention  of  the  Income  Tax — The  Budget  is  Resisted — Russell's  Resignation — Aberdeen  Fails 
to  Form  a  Ministry — Russell  is  Recalled — Gladstone  Opposes  the  Ecclesiastical  Titles  Bill — Points  in  his  Argu- 
ment— His  Exposition  of  the  Ecclesiastical  Question — The  Ecclesiastical  Titles  Bill  is  Passed — The  Coup  d'Etat  in 
France — Ministry  Agrees  to  Silence — Lord  Palmerston  Breaks  the  Compact — He  Defeats  the  Militia  Bill — Derby 
Fails — Death  of  the  Duke  of  Wellington — Tennyson's  Ode — Eulogies  in  the  House  of  Commons — Disraeli  Makes 
a  Break — Sarcasm  of  the  Globe  Newspaper — Gladstone's  Eulogy — The  Queen  Expresses  her  Grief,     -         196-205 


CONTENTS.  15 

CHAPTER  XIII. 
Coup  d'Etat  and  First  Budget. 
The  Year  1852 — Conflicting  Interests  in  Great  Britain — Disraeli  Must  Face  the  Condition — His  Plan  for 
Raising  a  Revenue  and  Reducing  Expenditures — Sir  Charles  Wood's  Contention — Robert  Lowe's  Speech — Sir 
James  Graham  Attacks  the  Budget — Disraeli's  Rejoinder — Gladstone  Takes  up  the  Theme — He  Discusses  the 
House  Tax  and  Condemns  the  Budget  Generally — The  Ministry  is  Defeated — Aberdeen  Forms  a  Coalition  Min- 
istry— Gladstone  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer — Louis  Napoleon  and  the  Coup  d'Etat — Tour  of  the  Prince-Presi- 
dent— His  Speech  at  Bordeaux — "The  Emiiire  is  Peace" — The  Republic  is  Converted  into  an  Empire — Effect  of 
the  Coup  in  Great  Britain — Difficulties  of  Gladstone's  Position — He  Studies  the  Finances — His  Plan  for  the  Re- 
duction of  the  Public  Debt — He  Presents  his  First  Budget — His  Estimates  for  the  Year — He  Proposes  an  Income 
Tax — How  the  Same  Should  be  Laid — Items  of  Increase  and  Reduction — A  Limit  of  Time  on  the  Income  Rate — 
How  this  Tax  had  Worked  in  the  Past — A  Bold  Policy  Necessary — The  Proposed  Tax  Should  be  Temporary — 
Gladstone's  Peroration — Disraeli's  Criticism  of  the  Budget — His  Views  on  the  Income  Tax,  Land  Tax,  etc. — The 
Budget  Before  the  House — It  is  Approved,       .--.---.  206-216 

CHAPTER   XIV. 

French  Alliance  and  Crimean  War. 
Nature  of  the  Disputes  Involved  in  the  Crimean  War — The  Eastern  Question  and  the  Parties  Thereto — 
Great  Britain's  Interest  in  the  Controversy — Relation  of  Turkey  to  the  Issue — France's  Part  in  the  Dispute — 
Personal  Pique  of  Louis  Napoleon — The  Motley  Team — The  Casus  Belli — Strife  of  the  Greek  and  Roman  Cath- 
olic Churches  in  the  East — Concessions  of  Islam  to  Christianity  and  Palestine — The  Czar  and  the  "Sick  Man  " — 
The  "  Necessary  Arrangements  " — Great  Britain  Rejects  the  Overture — Reason  for  War  Variously  Stated — Motive 
Ascribed  by  France  and  England — The  Czar's  Proclamation — Address  of  Gladstone  at  Manchester — His  Cautious 
and  Peaceable  Disposition — Awkward  Position  of  Great  Britain — Nicholas  Answers  the  Challenge  of  the  Porte — 
The  Vienna  Note — Allied  Fleets  in  the  Black  Sea — Destruction  of  the  Turkish  Flotilla — Louis  Napoleon's  Letter 
to  Nicholas — The  Czar's  Answer — England  Loath  to  Begin  Hostilities — Kinglake's  Analysis  of  Gladstone's  Views 
— Necessity  of  the  Latter  to  Provide  the  Sinews  of  War — The  Clash  of  Arms — Commanders  and  Forces — Siege 
of  Sebastopol — Attacks  and  Sorties — Contraction  of  the  Allied  Lines — Storming  of  the  Redan  and  Malakoff — 
Death  of  the  Czar — Conclusion  of  the  War  and  Treaty  of  Paris — Hardships  of  the  Aberdeen  Ministry — Antago- 
nistic Attitude  of  Gladstone  and  Disraeli — Question  of  Taxation  versus  Borrowing — Gladstone's  Budget  of  1854 — 
His  Theory  of  Making  the  War  Period  Pay  its  Own  Way — Deficit  of  1853-54 — The  Chancellor  Would  Meet  it  by 
Taxation — Estimates  of  Income  and  Expenditure — Disraeli's  Mild  Protest — Lord  W^illoughby's  Break — Additional 
Outlays  Demanded — Gladstone  Resorts  to  Excise  Duties — Battle  over  the  Tax  on  Malt — Gladstone's  Policy  is 
Sustained,  .....-...._.  217-233 

CHAPTER    XV. 

Accession  of  Palmerston  and  Treaty  of  Paris. 
Policy  of  Those  Who  Opposed  the  War — Failure  of  the  Peace  Commission — Heart  Weakness  of  Lord  Aber- 
deen— Discordance  in  the  Ministry — Aspirations  of  Palmerston  and  Russell — Deplorable  Condition  of  the  British 
Army  in  Crimea — Transit  of  the  Angel  of  the  Bivouac — The  Queen's  Letter  to  Lord  Raglan — Excitement  in 
England  in  Consequence  of  the  Sufferings  of  the  Army — Lord  Palmerston  and  the  Cholera — Question  of  Burying 
the  Dead  under  Churches — Palmerston  Resigns  from  the  Ministry — And  is  Recalled — Prevalence  of  Intrigues — 
Prince  Albert's  Letter  to  Baron  Stockmar — Hostility  of  the  Ministry  Reaches  the  Court — Animosity  Against  the 
Prince  Consort — Imminent  Disruption  of  the  Cabinet — Palmerston's  Letter  to  his  Brother-in-law — Strictures  on 
the  Conduct  of  the  War — Disraeli's  Charge  on  the  Government — Russell  and  Gladstone  Parry  as  They  Can — The 
Four  Points  of  the  Vienna  Conference — Debate  on  the  Foreign  Enlistment  Bill — Roebuck's  Resolution  to  Investi- 
gate the  Conduct  of  the  War — Stafford's  Speech — His  Account  of  Conditions  in  the  Crimea — The  Effect  on  the 
Commons — Gladstone's  Reply — He  Censures  Lord  Russell — His  Passage  of  Eloquence — His  Attitude  toward  the 
Investigation — He  Defends  Newcastle — Disraeli's  Speech — Russell's  Attempt  at  Defense — The  Government  is 
Overwhelmed — Gladstone  Least  Affected — The  Queen  Tries  Derby,  Lansdowne,  and  Russell — Palmerston 
Chosen — Gladstone  Continues  in  Office — Layard  Attacks  the  New  Ministry — Palmerston's  Rejoinder — Gladstone, 
Graham,  and  Herbert  Resign — Accession  of  Alexander  II  and  the  Vienna  Conference — Attitude  of  the  Powers  in 
that  Assembly — Disraeli's  Resolution  Relative  Thereto — His  Bitter  Speech  against  Lord  Russell — Gladstone 
Undertakes  the  Defense  of  the  Four  Points — His  Plea  Excites  Aversion — Lord  Russell  Stands  Between — The 
Vote  of  Confidence — Gladstone's  Relations  with  the  Queen — Side  Light  from  Albert's  Correspondence — Lord 
Lytton's  Peroration — His  Resolution  in  the  Commons — Russell  Goes  Out — His  Explanation — Palmerston  At- 
tempts to  Stay  his  Fall — Disraeli's  Thrust — Roebuck  Renews  his  Assault — His  Acrimonious  Speech — Gladstone's 
Plea  for  Peace — Cessation  of  Hostilities — Assembling  of  the  Ambassadors  at  Paris — The  Eleven  Articles  of  the 
Treaty — The  Four  Supplemental  Paragr.nphs — Spread  of  the  Tidings,  -  .  .  .  234-258 


1 6  CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER  XVI. 
Last  Half  of  the  Sixth  Decade. 
Lord  Palmerston's  Fame  nt  the  Conclusion  of  the  AVar — The  Addre.ss  to  the  Queen — Dubious  Rejoicings — 
Sydney  Smith  to  Lady  Grey — Unfavorable  Period  in  Gladstone's  Career — Bad  Reminiscence  of  the  Aberdeen  Min- 
istry— Gladstone  Speaks  on  the  Treaty  of  Peace — "  Satisfaction"  rather  than  "Joy  " — His  Horror  of  Islam  and 
Loyalty  to  the  Church  of  England — Antipathy  to  the  Turks — His  Views  on  Moldavia,  Wallachia,  and  t;he  Black 
Sea — He  Approves  Arbitration — Inquires  into  the  Protocol — Question  of  a  Free  Press  in  Belgium — Agitation 
Begins  for  a  Kefoim  of  the  Educational  System — Russell's  Proposition — Gladstone's  .Speech  against  It— His  Views 
on  Secular  Education — How  to  Meet  the  War  Debt — ■Comewall  Lewis  Presents  his  Plan — Working  of  the  Foreign 
Enlistntent  Act  in  America — Gladstone  Speaks  against  the  Course  of  the  Government — The  Crampton  Affair — 
The  Speaker  Bewails  the  Chaos — Near  Conjunction  of  Gladstone  and  Disraeli — What  the  Oiicasion  Was — Views 
of  the  Former  on  the  Income  Tax — The  Budget  for  1857 — Disraeli's  Amendment — 'Gladstone  Holds  Strictly  to 
his  Own  Financial  Views — Disraeli's  Speech  on  the  Budget — Gladstone's  Estimates  on  the  Revenue  and  Expendi- 
ture— The  Budget  is  Accepted — Gladstone  Speaks  to  an  Amendment  j'n  re  the  Tea  Tax — Strength  of  the  Pal- 
merston  Ministry — Gladstone  Speaks  for  the  Equality  of  Women  in  Matters  of  Divorce — Origin  of  the  Difficult^ 
with  China — Policy  of  Great  Britain  with  Half-civilized  and  Barbarous  Nations — Character  of  the  Ship  Arro-w — 
Injustice  of  Great  Britain — Committee  of  Inquiry — Cobden  Arraigns  the  Government— Gladstones  Speech  Rel- 
arive  to  Sir  Jdhn  Bowring — His  Modified  Defense  of  China — He  Charges  Gi"eat  Britain  witn  Agpression  and 
Wrongdoing — Palmerston's  Rejoinder — Disraeli  Enters  the  Lists  against  Him — The  Cobden  Resolution  is  Adopted 
— Dissolntion  of  Parliament  and  Indorsement  of  the  Government — Bank  Panic  of  1857 — Glaastone's  Views  as  ta 
Causes  and  Conditions — Outbreak  of  the  Sepoy  Rebellion — Spread  of  the  British  Dominion  in  India — Beginning 
of  the  Mutrrry — Massacre  at  Meerut — The  Flame  Spreads  to  Delhi  and  Lahore — HavelooK  iJndertakes  tlie  Relie) 
of  Lncknow — The  Appeal  to  the  Chief  of  Bithoor — His  Treachery — ^The  Awful  Tragedy — Extinction  of  the 
Mutiny — Fate  of  the  East  India  Company — Its  Powers  Transferred  to  the  Crown — ifieginnings  of  the  Indian 
Empire — ^Gladstone  Opposes  the  Imperial  Tendency — And  Seeks  to  Save  the  £ast  India  Company — Orsini's 
Attempt  on  Napoleon — The  Conspiracy  to  Murder  Bill — Gibson's  Amendment — His  Attack  on  the  Government — 
Excerpt  from  the  London  Times — Gladstone's  Able  Speech — He  Urges  i: he  Dn-English  Character  of  the  Penduij^ 
Measure — Palmerston's  Defense  of  the  Bill — Defeat  of  the  Proposed  Act — Fall  of  Palmerston  and  Accession  oi 
Lord  Derby — Near  Approach  of  Gladstone  and  Disraeli — The  Former  is  Made  Commissioner  to  the  Ionian 
Islands — Question  of  Relinquishing  the  Protectorate — Gladstone  !fubiisnes  his  Studies  on  Homer  and  i he  Homeric 
Age — Introduction  of  the  Reform  Bill  of  1859 — Character  of  the  Measure — Lord  Russell's  Amendment — Gladstone 
Discusses  the  Question — His  Outline  of  Lord  Russell's  Policy — Aamits  the  Necessity  of  Reform — Failure  of 
the  Ministerial  Bill — Dissolution  and  Reindorsement  of  the  Government — The  Ministry  Fails  on  the  Address — 
Reaccession  of  Palmerston — Gladstone  a  Second  Time  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer,  -  -  259-28<< 

CHAPTER  XVII. 
Minister  of  Finaivci!;  under  Palmerston. 
Gladstone  is  Charged  with  Becoming  a  Liberal — The  Cry  Reaches  Oxford — He  is  Reelected — His  Budget  of 
1859 — The  Scheme  of  Receipt  and  Expenditure — Proposals  for  Revenue — Disraeli  Attacks  the  Gladstonian  Budget 
— Gladstone  Agrees  to  the  Reduction  of  European  Armaments — The  Cry  of  "  Free  Italy  " — France  Espouses  the 
Italian  Cause — Battles  of  Novara,  Magenta,  and  .Solferino — The  Treaty  of  Viilafranca — The  Six  Articles  of  Peace 
— Great  Britain  Feels  Herself  Disparaged — Lord  Elcho's  Proposition — Gladstone's  Speech  Thereon — What  He 
Proposed  as  British  Policy — Beginnings  of  the  Irish  Church  Question — Gladstone  Appears  in  Fine  Form  in  the 
Debate — A  Free-trade  Treaty  is  Concluded  with  France — Bright,  Cobden,  and  Chevallier  Lead — ^Cobden's 
Negotiations  with  Napoleon — His  Success  in  Preparing  the  Treaty — Great  Concessions  to  the  Principle  of  Free 
Trade — Gladstone  Rises  with  the  Wave — He  Brings  Forward  the  Budget  of  i860 — A  Memorable  Occasion — 
Beginning  of  his  Address — His  Account  of  the  Revenues  and  Expenditures — Question  of  Interest  and  Annuities 
— General  Increase  in  the  Wealth  of  the  Kingdom — Reduction  of  the  Taxation  and  the  Treaty  with  France — How 
Far  Great  Britain  would  Go  in  the  Direction  of  Free  Trade — The  Chancellor  Explains  the  New  Treaty — Proposal 
to  Make  Tea  Free — The  Speaker  Praises  Cobden — Proposed  Reduction  in  the  Customs  Duties — Articles  on  which 
the  Excise  might  be  Abolished — Paper  in  Particular — Other  Important  Commodities  Considered — Retention  of 
the  Income  Tax — The  Pending  Measure  a  Complete  Reform  in  the  Tariff  Systern — The  Speaker's  Peroration — 
Marked  Ability  of  the  Address — Character  of  his  Oratoiy — Elements  of  Opposition  to  the  Budget — Disraeli's  Atti- 
tude and  Argument — Gladstone's  Counter  Charge — Du  Cane's  Resolution — Paper  the  Danger  Point  in  the  Budget 
— Arguments  Pro  and  Con — The  Budget  Accepted — Derby's  Opposition  in  the  House  of  Lords — A  Critical  Sit- 
uation— Lord  Palmerston's  Three  Resolutions — Gladstone  Speaks  on  the  Rights  of  the  Two  Houses — Proposition 
to  Reduce  the  Duty  on  Foreign  Paper — Russell's  Proposal  for  Parliamentaiy  Reform — Gladstone's  Partial  Support 
— He  Becomes  Lord  Rector  of  the  University  of  Edinburgh — His  Address  on  the  Occasion — He  Discusses  the 
Strength  and  Weakness  of  Christian  Civilization — Also  the   Historical  Idea  of  a   University — The  University's 


CONTENTS.  I  7 

Mediating  Power  in  Society — The  Speakei-  Defends  Disputation — Question  of  Educational  Endowments — His 
Address  lo  the  Younger  MemberR  of  the  University— He  Exhorts  Them  to  Cheerful  Discipline  and  Fidelity — The 
Orator's  Peroration,       -..-.------  2S7-312 

CHAPTER   XVIII. 

BUDGKT    OF    1861    AND    AMERICAN    COMPLICATIONS. 

Importance  of  the  Seventh  Decade — In  What  State  that  Period  Found  the  Nation — What  Now  Devolved 
on  Gladstone — The  Year  1861 — England  Continues  lier  Policy  of  Neutrality — She  Cooperates  with  France 
against  China — Her  Majesty's  Address — Disposition  to  Abolish  the  Church  Rates — Gladstone's  Early  Views  on 
this  Question — Sir  John  Trelawny's  Bill — Reasons  for  Supporting  the  Measure — Gladstone's  Speech  on  the  Sub- 
ject— The  Division  of  Sentiment  in  the  Cabinet — A  Decision  against  the  Chancellor — Bill  to  Establish  Postal 
Savings  Banks — ^Outlines  of  the  Proposed  System — ^Success  of  the  Enterprise — The  Italian  Revolt  against  Francis 
II — Pope  Hennessy's  Bill — Speeches  on  the  Subject — Gladstone's  Discussion  of  the  Measure — His  Great  Passage 
—Historical  Outline  of  Italian  Conditions — The  Spealcer  Justifies  the  Italian  Revolution — Hope  that  Italy  may 
be  Nationa:lized — ^^Other  Speeches  Follow — The  Budget  of  1861 — Gladstone's  Introduction  of  his  Paper — Schedule 
of  Revenue  and  Expenditures — Question  of  the  French  Treaty — Estimates  for  the  Fiscal  Year  iS^i-^a — What 
Should  be  Remitted  and  What  Added — Gladstone's  Great  Success  in  Presenting  his  Budgets — Peroration  in  this 
IiiNtance — Strength  of  the  Opposition — Bentick  Challenges  Gladstone  on  the  Budget — Reply  to  the  Latter — He 
Verifies  his  Estimates — Disraeli  on  the  Tea  Tax — The  Sugar  Tax  and  the  Paper  Duty — One  Bill  .for  the  ^\^lole 
Budget-^Excite'ment  oT  the  Opposition — Robert  Cecil's  Attack — N-ature  of  his  Harangue — Gladstone's  Justifica- 
tion of  the  Single  Bill — Will  the  House  Support  the  Lords  in  their  Veto? — The  Onus  of  Defense  Rests  on  Glad- 
stone— The  Bill  for  the  Repeal  of  the  Paper  Duty  Becomes  a  Law — Beginning  of  the  American  Complication — 
Crossing  of  Opinion  between  Great  Britain  and  the  United  States — Casuistry  of  the  Former — The  Like  Vice  in 
America — Every  Nation  for  Itself — The  Trent  Aff"air — Great  Britain  Opens  her  Shipyards  to  the  Confederate 
Cruisers — She  Recognizes  the  Belligerency  of  the  Confederates — Injury  to  English  Interests  by  the  Civil  War — 
Comments  by  the  London  Times  on  the  American  Protective  System — Seriousness  of  the  Situation — Aristocratic 
England  against  the  Union — No  Recognition  of  Independence  for  the  Confederacy — Upper  England  Desires  our 
Downfall — Gladstone  Drifts  on  the  Evil  Tide — How  the  English  Revenue  Suffered — His  Ill-timed  Newcastle 
Speech — Great  Offense  in  the  United  States — Years  Required  to  Heal  the  Wound — Liberalism  at  Last  Atoned — 
Gladstone's  Subsequent  View  of  the  Matter  and  Apology- — Letter  to  Cyrus  W.  Field,  -  -  313-331 

CHAPTER  XIX. 
Other  Budgets  of  the  Palmerston  Regime. 
Gladstone's  Financial  Scheme  for  1S62 — Great  Losses  to  be  Confronted — How  the  Chancellor  of  the  Ex- 
chequer would  Meet  the  Conditions — His  View  of  the  Revenues — Question  of  Reducing  Taxes — Relative  Sim- 
plicity of  the  Budget — Disraeli's  Philippic  against  the  Scheme — Character  of  the  Assault  on  the  Chancellor's 
Measures — Uselessness  of  the  Attack — ^Gladstone's  Rejoinder — Pas.sage  with  Stafford  Northcote — The  Italian 
Question  Flares  up  Again — Folly  of  Bowyer  and  Hennessy — Gladstone's  Speech  on  the  Conditions  in  Italy — His 
Reference  to  his  own  Influence  in  Italian  Affaire — He  Explodes  Bovvyer's  History — His  Description  of  the  Prog- 
ress of  the  Revolution — ^Success  of  United  Italy — General  Popularity  of  Gladstone — ^He  Speaks  on  the  Occasion 
of  the  Testimonial  to  Kean — The  Budget  of  1863 — Question  of  Taxation  Still  Predominant — Outline  of  Glad- 
stone's Arguments  in  Presenting  his  Measures — Industrial  Conditions  in  England  and  Ireland — 'Question  of 
Applying  the  Surplus — Details  of  the  Revenue — 'Certain  Duties  to  be  Abolished — Reduction  of  the  Income  Tax 
— The  Chancellor  Reviews  his  Administration — Cionclusion  of  his  Address — The  Aristocracy  Raises  a  Clamor — 
Other  Causes  of  Opposition — Question  of  Taxing  Endowments — Glad.stone  Ccmfronts  the  Churchmen — His  Ar- 
gument against  Exempting  Charitable  Bequests — He  Describes  the  Different  Kinds  of  Endowments — He  is 
Obliged  to  Withdraw  the  Measure — Hubbard's  Resolution  and  Its  Rejection — The  Dissenters'  Burials  Bill — The 
Nature  of  the  Measure — Gladstone's  View  of  the  Question — Why  Englnnd  would  Oppose  the  Measure — Interna- 
tional Exposition  at  South  Kensington — Nature  of  the  Project — The  Measure  Fails — Ascendency  of  Gladstone  in 
the  Cabinet — His  Budget  of  1864 — Nature  of  the  Presentation — Surplus  Revenue  and  Expenditure — Question  of 
Reducing  the  National  Debt — Status  of  Exports  and  Imports — 'Gladstone  Hard  Pressed  by  Statistics — ^^Shall  We 
Abolish  the  Duty  on  Rags  ? — How  Much  Shall  Wine  be  Taxed? — Estimates  for  the  Fiscal  Year — Recommenda- 
tions for  Reduction — Question  of  Fire  Insurance — ^Optimistic  Statement  of  the  Financial  Condition — Difficult 
Point  of  the  Paper  Duty  and  the  Malt  Tax — Ought  the  Government  Annuities  to  be  Purchased? — Winds  of 
Opposition  Blow — Great  is  Diana — Parliament  Vibrates  with  the  Wind — Budget  of  1864  is  Adopted,     -    332-350 

CHAPTER   XX. 
Progress  toward  Liberalism  and  Rejection  by  Oxford. 
Gladstone  as  a  Cause  and  Effect — He  Opens  the  Dike  for  Political  Revolution — Question  of  the  Disfranchised 
— Philosophy  of  Agitation   among  the    Working  Classes — American   View  of   the    Question — Gladstone's    Mild 
2 


1 8  CONTENTS. 

Policy — His  Liberalism  Extends  to  the  Church — Shall  Prussia  Occupy  Schleswig-Holstein  ? — War  in  Denmark — 
Disraeli's  Resolution  of  Thanks  to  the  Queen — A  Covert  Thrust — Debate  of  the  Two  Leaders — Gladstone  Attacks 
Disraeli's  Resolution — Other  Participants  in  the  Discussion — The  Genus  Peelite — Kmglake's  Substitute  Adopted 
— Dillwynd's  Resolution  against  the  Irish  Church — Gladstone's  Significant  Speech — Position  of  the  Irish  People 
— Importance«of  Gladstone's  Utterance — Other  Speakers — Gladstone's  Letter  to  his  Trinity  Correspondent — 
Budget  of  1865 — Gladstone's  Hold  on  Parliamentary  Power — His  Summary  of  Existing  Conditions — Character  of 
his  Fiscal  Orations — Outline  of  the  Pending  Budget — Aspect  of  Trade — Estimate  of  Expenditure — Beer  and  Wine 
Question — Tea  Tax  and  Income  Tax — Fire  Insurance — The  Duty  on  Malt — Approaching  End  of  the  Parliament 
— What  about  Reelection? — Will  Oxford  Indorse  Us? — New  System  of  Oxonian  Voting — Insurrection  of  Con- 
servatism— The  Wilberforce  Affair — Danger  of  Defeat — Coleridge's  Manifesto^Gladstone  is  Rejected — Analysis 
of  the  Vote — Gladstone  Defeated  by  the  Older  Fellows — Mingled  Sweet  and  Bitter  in  the  Overthrow — General 
Opinion  in  England — Utterance  of  the  Times — Summary  of  the  Situation  by  the  Daily  News — Church  Organs 
Approve  the  Thing  Done — Gladstone's  Valedictory  Address — He  Appeals  to  South  Lancashire — Character  of  his 
Paper — "  I  Come  Among  You  Unmuzzled  " — His  Speecli  at  the  Manchester  Reception — His  Expressions  of  Joy 
on  his  Emancipation — He  Lords  the  Liberal  Party — And  Claims  a  Share — A  Swift  and  Victorious  Campaign — 
Liverpool  and  Manchester  Indorse  the  Candidate — He  Reviews  the  Oxford  Incident — His  Defense  of  the  Palmer-' 
ston  Regime — He  is  Elected — The  New  Parliament — Death  of  Palmerston — Sketch  of  his  Career — Gladstone's 
Eulogy — Richard  Cobden  Dies — Outline  of  his  Life  and  Character,  Incidents  Illustrative  of  his  Purpose — Circum- 
stances of  his  Death — Russell  Accedes  and  Gladstone  Becomes  Leader  of  the  House,  -  -  351-372 

CHAPTER    XXL 

Reform  Bill  of  1S66. 

Question  of  Reforming  Parliament — Gladstone  Introduces  the  Budget  of  '66 — His  Estimates  of  Revenues  and 
Expenditures — Commercial  Condition — Various  Duties  Repealed  or  Reduced — Question  of  the  National  Debt — 
Commercial  Prospects — The  British  Coal  Supply — Relation  of  the  Debt  Thereto — The  Irish  Question  Obtrudes 
Itself — Gladstone's  Speech  on  the  Irish  Amendment — Bright's  Appeal  to  the  Rival  Leaders — Gladstone's  Reply — 
Proposed  Abolition  of  Church  Taxes — Hardcastle's  Bill — Method  of  Compromising  Such  Questions — The  Austro- 
Prussian  War — Gladstone's  Views  of  the  Conflict  and  its  Results — The  Queen's  Address  Promises  Reform — Glad- 
stone Prepares  the  Reform  Bill — He  Explains  the  Features  of  the  Measure — Extension  of  the  Suffrage  the  Bottom 
Principle — Gladstone  Appeals  to  the  House  for  an  Equitable  Decision — He  Would  Welcome  the  Army  of  New 
Voters — Difficulty  of  Government  by  Party — Horsman  and  Lowe  Revolt — Personality  of  Mr.  Lowe — His  Speech 
against  the  Reform  Bill — Horsman's  Denunciation — John  Bright  Retorts  with  Hot  Pitch — He  Discovers  the 
Cave  of  Adullam — Effectiveness  of  Bright's  Manner  and  Method — He  Creates  the  Adullamites — Passage 
of  Gladstone  with  Bulwer-Lytton — "Gradual  Hesh  and  Blood" — The  Opposition  is  Aggravated — The  Easter 
Recess — Demonstration  at  Liverpool  and  Gladstone's  Speech — John  Bright's  Clarion  Cry — The  People  Rise 
in  Favor  of  the  Bill — Lowe  Returns  to  the  Onset — His  Speech  against  Reform — He  Assails  the  Liberals — 
His  Attack  on  Russell — He  Excoriates  Demagogues — He  Improves  Gladstone's  Virgil — His  Peroration — 
Effectiveness  of  the  Speech — Disraeli  Appears  for  the  Opposition — Gladstone  Rallies  in  Behalf  of  the  Bill — He 
Replies  to  Disraeli — Refers  to  his  Early  Publication — Defends  the  Liberal  Party — Predicts  a  Victorious  Outcome 
— Closeness  of  the  Vote  on  the  Second  Reading — Frenzy  of  the  Tories  and  the  Adullamites — Gladstone's  Calmness 
— He  Goes  Forward  with  his  Scheme — The  Redistribution  Bill — The  Two  Measures  as  One — Dunkellin's  Amend- 
ment is  Adopted — Overthrow  of  the  Russell  Ministry — Accession  of  Lord  Derby — The  New  Premier  Proceeds 
Cautiously — Great  Demonstrations  in  Favor  of  Reform — The  Radical  Orators  in  High  Feather — Hyde  Park 
Meeting  and  Riot — Toryism  Experiences  a  Change  of  Heart — Disraeli  as  the  Asian  Mystery — He  Must  Face  the 
Situation — He  Becomes  a  Reformer — First  Measures  Proposed  by  Him — The  Liberals  Rally  against  his  Scheme 
— A  Bill  is  Proposed  and  Presented — A\%o  Another  Bill — The  Real  Bill  is  Presented — Astonishing  Nature  of  this 
Business — Disraeli  Explains  the  Tory  Reform  Bill  of  1S67 — The  Franchise  in  Counties — Suffrage  for  all  Graduates 
— Property  as  a  Limited  Basis — Double  Voting — Plan  of  Redistribution — What  Boroughs  Gained  and  What  Lost — 
The  Seven-Pound  Qualification — Taking  the  Wind  Out  of  Liberal  Sails — Gladstone's  Policy  with  Respect  to  the 
Measure — The  Liberal  Proposition — Gladstone  Proposes  Amendments — Disraeli's  Acceptance  and  Explanation  of 
Conditions — Chaotic  State  of  Affairs — Injustice  to  Gladstone — British  Character  Explained  by  the  Situation — 
Hodgkinson's  Amendment  to  the  Bill  is  Accepted — Disraeli's  Adaptability — Gain  of  Seats  by  Certain  Boroughs — 
The  House  Goes  Forward  as  It  Will — Compliance  of  Disraeli — Good  Logic  of  the  Prime  Minister — Bernal 
Osborne's  Attack  on  the  Ministry — Lord  Cranbourne  Resigns — He  Denounces  Disraeli's  Policy — Passage  of  the 
Reform  Bill — Action  of  the  Lords — One  Modification  Effected — Lord  Russell's  Assault  on  the  Scheme — Robert 
Lowe  again  Becomes  Clamorous — The  Commons  Have  their  Own  Way — Toadyism  Accomplishes  What  Liber- 
alism had  Failed  to  Do — Death  of  Lord  Derby — Disraeli  Succeeds  him  in  Office — Gladstone  Leads  the  Oppo- 
sition,    -..--.-.-....  373-408 


CONTENTS.  19 

CHAPTER    XXII. 

The  Disestablishment  of  the  Irish  Church. 

Black  Friday  in  London  and  New  York — Losses  Entailed  by  the  Failure  of  Overend,  Guerney  &  Company 
— The  Panic  that  Ensued — Gladstone's  Policy  Relating  Thereto — Beginning  of  the  Labor  Agitation — The  Riot  at 
Deptford — Disraeli's  Accession  to  the  Premiership — Outbreak  of  the  War  with  Abyssinia — Beginning  of  Fenian 
Troubles  in  Ireland — Gladstone's  Delicate  Criticism  of  the  Address  from  the  Throne — His  Suggestions  Relative 
to  Abyssinia — Hint  at  the  Irish  Church  Question — Disraeli's  Reply — His  Views  on  the  Irish  Question  and  Ex- 
planation of  the  Abyssinian  Situation — Sketch  of  the  War  with  King  Theodore — Afterparts  of  the  Conflict — Dis- 
raeli's Brilliant  Passage — Serious  Condition  of  Affairs  in  Ireland — Outspreading  of  the  Fenian  Society — Its  Origin 
— The  English  Oppression  Across  the  Channel — What  Great  Britain  had  Done  to  Alleviate — Inadequate  Meas- 
ures of  Parliament — Gladstone's  Outcry  in  the  Name  of  his  Country — Dreadful  Condition  of  the  Irish  Church — 
Long  Standing  of  the  Abuse — Lord  Russell's  Comments  on  the  Evil — Demands  of  Ireland  in  the  Year  1868 — Re- 
lation of  the  Irish  Church  Question  to  the  Land  Question — Difficulty  of  Touching  Either — Gladstone's  Forecast 
of  the  Result — Maguire's  Resolution — Policy  of  "  Leveling  Up  " — Loi'd  Mayo's  Attitude — The  Word  "  Disestab- 
lishment " — Gladstone's  First  Challenge — He  Explores  the  Way  before  Him — The  Government  Quails  before  the 
Question — Disraeli's  Embarrassment — His  Pathetic  Appeal — Gladstone's  Three  Resolutions — Efforts  to  Temporize 
with  the  Issue — Lord  Stanley's  Amendment — Substance  and  Method  of  Gladstone's  Speech — His  Reply  to  Dis- 
raeli's Complaint — His  Former  Views — Further  Features  of  his  Argument — His  Treatment  of  the  Stanley  Amend- 
ment— Lord  Stanley's  Reply — Speech  of  Lord  Cranborne — Hardy's  Address — John  Bright's  Assault — Lowe's  Sar- 
casm and  Invective — Disraeli's  Conclusion — His  Retort  on  Lowe — The  Government  Driven  into  a  Corner — Glad- 
stone Concludes  for  the  Opposition — Stanley's  Amendment  is  Voted  Down — The  Ministry  Staggers  on — It 
Negotiates  with  the  Catholic  Church — The  Discussion  Becomes  Acrimonious — The  Assaults  on  Gladstone — His 
First  Resolution  is  Carried — Still  the  Ministry  Holds  on — Gladstone  Presses  his  Advantage — The  Second  and 
Third  Resolutions  are  Carried — The  Suspensory  Bill — Bright's  Attack  on  the  Prime  Minister — The  College  of 
Maynooth  Becomes  an  Issue — Nature  of  the  Regnum  Donum — Resolution  to  Abolish  the  Grants — Minor  Questions 
of  Legislature — Knightley's  Resolution  of  Reform — Excitement  Relative  to  the  Oncoming  Election — Attempts  to 
Defeat  Gladstone — Tactics  of  the  Liberals  to  Prevent  it — The  Nation  Supports  the  Liberal  Party — Extent  of  the 
Majority — The  Disraeli  Ministry  Resigns — Gladstone  Becomes  Prime  Minister — Constitution  of  the  Liberal 
Cabinet — Anecdote  of  John  Bright — Beginning  of  the  Real  Battle  for  Disestablishment — The  Olf  Order  Rises  in 
Revolt — Denunciations  of  the  Clerical  Party — The  New  Parliament  Convenes — Gladstone's  Preparation  for  the 
Conflict — His  Style  of  Speech — The  Act  to  Put  an  End  to  the  Established  Church — The  Prime  Minister's  Great 
Address — The  Distinction  between  Disendowment  and  Disestablishment — Proposed  Method  of  Reorganization — 
The  Vested  Interest  and  the  Tithe — Provision  for  the  Curatis — Disposition  of  the  Church  Buildings  and  Glebe 
Houses — Difficult  Question  of  the  Regnum  Donum — How  the  Tithe  Rent  Charges  Should  be  Extinguished — Pro- 
posed Uses  of  the  Overplus  from  Disestablishment — Gladstone's  Manner  of  Presenting  his  Scheme — His  Optimism 
— ■The  Peroration  of  his  Speech — Satisfying  Character  of  the  Scheme  Proposed — Beginning  of  Disraeli's  Speech — 
His  Manner  and  his  Argument — Dr.  Ball  Assails  the  Measure — Speech  of  Sir  Roundell  Palmer — Mr.  Lowe 
Makes  a  Charge — Gathorne  Hardy  Attacks  the  Prime  Minister  and  Denounces  the  Bill — Gladstone's  Telling  Re- 
joinder— "The  Clock  was  Pointing  to  the  Dawn" — Division  of  the  House — The  Government's  Majority  for 
Second  Reading — Further  Debate  of  Disraeli  and  the  Prime  Minister — The  Tiiird  Reading  is  Carried — Abuse  of 
Gladstone — Part  Taken  by  the  Bishop  of  St.  David's — Lord  Derby's  Final  Attack  on  the  Bill  in  the  House  of 
Lords — Slight  Majority  Given  for  the  Measure  in  that  Body — Importance  of  the  Act  of  Disestablishment,  409-446 

CHAPTER  XXIII. 
The  Great  Liberal  Ascendency. 
The  Land  Question  Follows  Hard  After — Reformatory  Character  of  the  Epoch — Philosophy  of  such  Move- 
ments— Introduction  of  the  Irish  Land  Bill — Gladstone's  Address  in  Presenting  It — Misapprehension  of  Conditions 
in  Ireland — Prime  Minister's  Resume  of  History  Past — No  Progress  Hitherto  Made  toward  Solving  tlie  Land 
Question — Complicated  Character  of  the  Irish  System — Difficulty  of  Elucidating  the  Subject — Insecurity  of  Tenure 
— How  the  Tenants  were  Held  Back  from  Improvements — Peculiarity  of  the  Ulster  Custom — Startling  Increase 
in  the  Irish  Rents — The  Prime  Minister's  Exposition  of  the  Subject — The  Remedial  Measures  Proposed — His 
Appeal  for  a  Candid  Consideration — Expression  of  Hopes  for  the  Regeneration  of  Ireland — The  Peroration — 
Favorable  Prospects  of  the  Bill — Sir  Roundell  Palmer's  Attack  on  the  Measure — Disraeli's  Speech — Gladstone's 
Reply — Overwhelming  Majority  for  the  Second  Reading — Amendments  Offered  to  the  Measure — Success  of  the 
Land  Bill  in  Both  Houses — Question  of  National  Education  Next — Forsler  Leads  the  Way — Position  of  Noncon- 
formists and  Dissenters — Traditional  Opinion  of  the  British  Nation  against  Secular  Education — The  Forster  Bill — 
Necessity  of  Doing  Something — Appalling  Conditions  of  the  Cities — Heterogeneous  Educational  State  of  the  King- 
dom— Nonattendance  on  the  Schools — The  Neglected  Army  of  Children — Provisions  of  the   Pending  Bill — The 


20  CONTENTS. 

Measure  Provokes  Opposition — The  Rill  is  Debated  and  Passed — Passage  between  Miall  and  Gladstone — Contem- 
poraneous History  on  the  Continent — The  Franco-Prussian  War — Suspicion  of  Great  Britain  on  Account  of  the  Bis- 
marck-Benedetli  Compact — Agitation  of  the  Government — Gladstone's  Weakness  in  Presence  of  War — Neutrality 
of  Belgium  Guaranteed — Episode  of  the  Greek  Brigands — Indignation  at  their  Crime — Rigor  of  Greek  Government 
and  Extermination  of  Offenders — Act  to  Determine  Appointments  by  Competitive  Examinations — General-in- 
chief  to  be  Named  by  Minister  of  War — Passage  of  the  Foreign  Enlistment  Act — Release  of  the  Fenian  Pris- 
oners in  t)uWin,  .-_,...----  447-463 

CHAPTER  XXrV. 
Decline  of  the  Reformatory  Movement. 
The  Liberal  Cause  Begins  to  Wane — Apparition  of  the  Eastern  Question — Russia  Takes  Advantage  of  the 
Franco-Prussian  Crisis — Her  Notificatioa  to  the  Powers — I'he  London  Conference — Disraeli  Attacks  the  Govern- 
ment— Gladstone's  Reply — Continuance  of  the  Debate — Herbert's  Resolutioa — Question  of  Purchase  in  the  Army 
— Card  well's  Measure  of  Reorganization — Position  of  the  Libei-al  Party  on  tlie  Subject — Course  of  the  Debate — 
Attitude  of  the  Leadjers — The  Question  in  the  Committee  of  the  Whole — Disraeli's  Views  of  the  Subject-^— Glad- 
stone's Coup — ^Adroit  Cancellation  of  the  Royal  Warrant — Disraeli's  Denunciation  of  tlie  Measure — Duke  of  Rich- 
mond's Resolutioa  of  Censure — Speeches  on  the  Subject — Gladstone's  Justification — The  AdminLstratien  Measure 
is  Ratified  by  Parliament — The  Ballot  Bill  before  the  House — Anger  in  tke  House  of  Lords — The  University 
Tests  Repeal — The  Marriage  Portion  of  the  Princess  Louise — Effects  of  Disestablishment  and  Land  Reform  m 
Ireland — Disorder  and  Crime  in  tliat  Country  Calls  for  Investigation — ^Disraeli's  Charge  on  Hartington — Glad- 
stone's Reply — Bernal  Osborne's  Speech — Question  of  Woman  Suffrage — The  Treaty  of  Washington — Agreement 
Respecting  the  Alabama  Claims — Lowe's  Work  on  the  Tax  Question — Whalley's  Letter  to  Gladstone — The  Prime 
Minister's  Reply — First  Hint  at  Home  Rule  in  Ireland — Gladstone's  Speech,  at  Aberdeen — His  Antipathy  to  the 
Cause — The  Prime  Minister's  Character  Illustrated — His  Speeches  During  the  Recess — The  "  Battle  of  Dorking" 
— Gladstone's  Reply — Hiis  Visit  to  Blackheath  and  his  Address  at  tkat  Place — Threatening  Demonstration  against 
Him^ — He  WTins  the  Day — Tlie  Yeai-  1871. — The  Liberal  Party  Loses  Ground — Illness  and  Recovei-y  of  the  Prince 
of  Wales — Activity  and  Bitterness  of  the  Opposition — The  "Blaze  of  Apology" — Gladstone  Replies  to  the 
Attacks — Debate  on  the  Washington  Treaty — Criticism  on  the  Appointment  of  Sir  Robert  Collier — Tlie  Case  of 
Mr.  Harvey — Sir  Charles  Ddlke  Attacks  the  CivU.  List — Sir  Charles  Speaks  the  Question — His  Declaration  of 
Republicanism — Gladstone's  Condemnation  of  the  Motion — The  yl-A'/^V  which  Followed — The  Republican  Stiength 
in  Great  Britain — The  Ballot  Bill  Revives — Harcourt's  Amendment — Question  of  Settling  ihe  A/aiatua  Claims — 
Board  of  Arbitration  at  Geneva — The  Award — How  the  Decision  was  Received — Approaching  Crisis  for  the  Min- 
istry— The  Irish  University  Bill — Gladstone's  Review  of  the  Measure  and  of  the  Situation — The  Question  Stated 
— The  Educational  Condition  in  Ireland — Lessons  from  the  Statistics* — Chaos  of  the  Irish  Institutions — Gladstone 
Delineates  his  Plan  of  Amendment — ^What  He  Would  Do  with  the  Colleges — OudiiTC  of  the  Financial  Scheme — 
The  Projet  of  Government — Hot  Opposition  to  the  Measure — The  Catholic  Bishops  Cry  Out — Irish  Parliamen- 
taiians  Take  the  Cue — The  Radical  Liberals  Revolt — Gladstone  in  a  Strait  Place — Debate  all  Along  the  Line 
— Lowe  Excoriates  Horsman — Speech  of  the  War  Minister — Disraeli  Concludes  for  the  Opposition — His  Argu- 
ment— Gladstone  Strives  to  Turn  the  Fight — He  Explains  and  Defends  the  Bill — The  Prime  Minister's  Peroration 
— Rejection  of  the  Bill — Gladstone  Ofifei-s  his  Resignation — It  is  Not  Accepted — The  Interregnum — Miall's  Resolu- 
tion against  the  English  Church — The  Country  Wearies  of  Reform — Dissolution,  Election,  and  Verdict — Gladstone's 
Manifesto — He  Attempts  to  Stay  the  Reaction — Disraeli's  Address  to  Buckinghamshire — Gladstone  at  Blackheath 
—  The  Canvass  of  1874 — Defeat  of  the  Liberals  and  Overthrow  of  the  Gladstone  Ministry,  -  464-503 

CHAPTER  XXV. 
Ot'T  OF  Office. 
Close  of  a  Great  Period  in  Gladstone's  Life — Ascendency  of  Disraeli — His  Character — Sentiment  Respecting 
Gladstone's  Overthrow — His  Letter  to  Lord  Granville — Doubtful  State  of  his  Mind  adiiiterim — A  Quasi-Liberal 
Leadership — Disraeli  Dissatisfiea — The  Queen's  Address  and  Gladstone's  .Speech — Conservatism  has  Little  to  Do 
— Mild-mannered  Legislation — Languid  Measures  of  Reform — He  Speaks  on  the  Duke  of  Richraontl's  BiO — 
Reasons  Why  the  Measure  Should  Not  be  Adopted — Significance  of  a  Cheer — Relation  of  the  Established  Church 
to  the  Scottish  Presbytery — Richmond's  Bill  is  Passed — Activity  in  the  House  of  Lords — Canterbury's  Bill  for 
Uniformity  of  Worship — Gladstone  Speaks  on  the  Question  in  the  House — What  Would  Follow  the  Enforcement 
of  Uniformity — Dead  Letters  in  the  Ritual — Hurtful  Elements  in  the  Canterbury  Proposition — Gladstone  Defines 
his  Position  in  English  Society — He  Offers  a  Series  of  Resolutions  to  Supersede  the  Canterbury  Scheme — The 
House  Supports  the  Government — The  Endowed  Schools  Act — Alarm  of  the  Antichurch  Party — Forster  and  Glad- 
stone Speak  in  Opposition — Outline  of  the  Argirment  of  the  Latter — He  Describes  the  Estimate  of  Foreigners 
Respecting  British  Methods — Evils  of  Too  Much  Precedent — Disraeli's  Polic}'  with  Regard  to  the  Pending 
Measure — Gladstone's  Address  to  the  Students  in  Liverpool  College — He  Explains  the  Status  of  Religions  Belief 
and  the  Philosophy  of  Faith  and  Practice — Danger  of  Reckless  Novelty  in  Speculation — Gladstone's  Absence  from 


CONTENTS.  21 

the  House — Disraeli's  Method  when  Out  of  Politics — Contrast  of  the  Intellectual  Products  of  the  Two  Men — 
Sentiments  of  the  Friends  of  the  Two — Screed  of  the  Pall  Mali  (y'czci'/^^  — Gladstone's  Address  to  the  Buckley 
Institute — His  Views  of  the  Labor  Question  and  the  Transaction  of  Business — Necessity  for  Intellectual  Develop- 
ment among  the  Working  Classes — Question  of  Books  and  Amusements — Books  the  Resource  of  the  Common 
People — Gladstone  Speaks  also  at  Mdl  Hill — He  Discusses  the  Question  of  Prizes — Reminiscences  and  Exhor- 
tation to  the  Students — Counsel  to  the  Management — Second  Letter  to  Lord  Granville — Who  Shall  be 
Leader  of  the  Liberals  ? — Lowe  and  Bright  Considered — Sketch  of  the  Character  of  the  Latter— The  Marquis 
of  Hartington  Chosen — Morgan's  Burials  Bill — The  Qitestion  at  Issue — May  Men  be  Buried  as  They  Will 
Be? — Gladstone  Criticises  the  Budget  of  1875 — Outline  of  his  Ai-gument — The  Sinking  Fund  Discussed — 
Revival  of  the  Ecclesiastical  Question — The  Reformation  on  tlie  Continent  and  in  Great  Britan — Differences 
between  Rome  and  the  Anglican  Church — Quakerism  and  Formalism — How  the  Sects  Have  Proceeded— How 
Much  Ritual  Shall  We  Have  ? — Gladstone  W^rites  Essays  on  Ritualism — Attitude  of  the  Irish.  Bishops  amd  the 
Romanist  Party — Gladstone's  Article  in  the  Contemporary  Reviczv — He  Proceeds  from  the  Abstract  to  the 
Concrete  Example — He  Discusses  the  Crusade  of  Rome  in  England — The  Ritual  Deducible  from  the  Gospel — 
Heated  Controversy  Breaks  Out — Gladstone's  Five  Propositions — He  Publishes  the  Vatican  Decrees — The 
Dogma  of  Infallibility  Discussed — The  Writer  Makes  a  Dilemma  for  His  Opponents — His  Deduction  from 
the  Embarrassment  of  the  Roman  Party — He  Alleges  his  Former  Friendliness  to  Rome — Describes  the  Status 
of  Affairs  in  the  Mother  Church — Present  Attitude  of  Roman  Catholics  Compared  with  Conditions  of  the 
Sixteenth  Century — Antagonism  of  the  Romanist  Party^ — The  Paper  Entitled  Vaticanism — The  Secession  of 
Cardinal  Newman — Tke  Writer  Continues  the  Discussion  of  the  Vatican  Decrees — His  Manner  of  Life  at 
Hawarden — His  Intellectual  Activity  in  the  Years  1874-79 — His  Contributions  to  the  Great  Reviews — Last  Words 
and  Very  Last  Words — "  Kin  Beyond  the  Sea" — "  Gleamings  of  Past  Years  "—Current  Affairs  in  Europe — Glad- 
stone's Proposition  Relative  to  the  Turk — Tlie  Trouble  in  Hei-zegovina — Exit  of  Abdul-Ariz — Disraeli  Announces 
Victoria's  Title  of  Empress  of  India — Horrors  in  Bulgaria  and  Servia — Disraeli's  Reply  to  Gladstone's  Interroga- 
tion— Disraeli  Becomes  Earl  of  Beaconsfield — His  Farewell  Address — Bad  News  from  Eastern  Europe — Massacre 
in  Bulgaria — Gladstone's  Pamphlet  on  the  Bulgarian  Horrors — He  Advocates  the  Extinction  of  the  Turkish  Power 
in  Bulgaria  and  Herzegovina — The  Bag  and  Baggage  Proposition — Gladstone's  Speech  at  Blackheath — Europe 
Should  Act  Together  against  the  Turk — Friendly  Sentiments  toward  Russia — Gladstone's  Reappearance  in  Public 
Life — Menacing  Attitude  of  Russia — The  Czar  Encouraged  by  Beacoiasfield — Conference  at  Constantinople — 
Gladstone's  Suggestions  to  that  Assembly — He  Urges  the  Support  of  the  Popular  Cause  in  the  Turkish  Provinces 
— Plan  of  Reform  by  the  Conference — Gladstone's  Speech  at  the  Opening  of  Parliament — Chaplain  is  Called  to 
Order — Gladstone's  Memorable  Reply  to  his  Assailant — He  Defends  Himself  and  Dispatches  Chaplain — He 
Refers  to  Those  in  Power — What  Duty  Indicated  for  Himself — His  Denunciation  of  Turkey — The  Turko-Russian 
War  Begins — Gladstone's  Resolution  of  May  7 — He  Overfraws  the  INIark — Break  in  the  Liberal  Party — He 
Shows  What  Should  be  the  Attitude  of  Great  Britain — Not  Too  Late  for  Reform — Futile  Efforts  to  Civilize  the 
Turks — The  Nation  is  with  the  Speaker — Movement  of  the  Russian  Army — Shipka  Pass  is  Taken— Siege  of 
Flevna — Investment  of  Kars  and  Ereeroun — Turkey  is  Prostrated — Settlement  of  the  Points  at  Issue  at  San 
Stefano — The  Powei-s  Interfere — The  Congress  of  Berlin — Outbrealc  of  Jingoism  in  London — Insults  to  Gladstone 
— He  Becomes  Rector  of  the  University  of  Glasgow — His  Address  on  the  Occasion — His  Remarks  Provoke 
Beaconsfield — Almost  a  Quarrel  between  the  Rivals — Trouble  in  Afghanistan — Nature  of  the  Difficulty — Glad- 
stone Charges  the  Government  with  Responsibility — The  People  the  Tribunal — Conscience  in  International 
Affairs — The  Speaker  Declares  the  Afghan  War  Unjust — He  Lays  the  Responsibility  at  the  Door  of  the  Commons 
— Outbreak  of  the  Zulu  War — Reviving  Courage  of  the  Liberals — Gladstone  Ready  for  the  Fray— Suppressed 
Volcano  in  Ireland — The  Midlothian  Campaign — Question  of  Liberal  Leadership — Discomfiture  of  the  Con- 
servatives— The  Queen  Tries  Expedients — Gladstone  Again  Becomes  Prime  Minister,  -  -  504-558 

CHAPTER  XXVI. 
First  Battle  for  Home  Rule. 
Growth  of  the  Home  Rule  Contingent — That  Party  in  Touch  with  the  Liberals — Predominance  of  a  Single 
Idea — The  Land  League  Becomes  a  Political  and  Social  Force— Charles  Stuart  Parnell — Policy  of  Ignoring  the 
Home  Rule  Party — The  Situation  in  Ireland — How  the  Existing  Order  Tries  to  Stay  Agitation — The  Coercion 
Act  is  Introduced — The  New  Land  Bill — Freedom  of  Debate  in  the  Commons — The  Home  Rulers  Continue  the 
Discussion — The  Speaker  Overrules  "  Privilege  " — Expylsion  of  the  Irish  Leaders — Reaction  in  their  Favor — 
Gladstone  Sympathizes— The  Land  Bill  Will  not  Suffice — The  Spirit  of  Irish  Reform  Becomes  Rampant — 
General  Revolt  in  18S1 — Denunciation  of  the  Land  League — Genesis  of  the  Boycott — Story  of  Captain  Boycott — 
Incident  of  the  Greenwich  Memorial  Chair— Gladstone  is  Prolific  in  Speeches — Episode  of  "  Buckshot"  Forster 
— John  Dillon's  Anathema — He  Curses  and  Defies  and  is  Arrested — Embarrassment  of  the  Government — The 
Arms  Bill — "  The  Treaty  of  Kilmainham" — The  Irish  Jails  are  Filled— Work  of  Annie  Parnell — Bishops  For  and 
Against — Rise  of  the  National  Party — The  Liberal  Party  must  Accept  the  Home  Rulers — The  Tragedy  of  Phoenix 


22  CONTENTS. 

Park — A  Great  Sensation  Follows — rarnell  in  the  House  of  Commons — The  Koar  at  Bay — Reaction  against  the 
Liberal  Ascendenc_\ — Passage  of  the  Crimes  Bill  and  Arrears  of  Rent  Bill — Dillon's  Speech  on  the  Condition  of 
Ireland — Gladstone's  Argument  on  the  Right  of  Eviction — Bad  Effects  of  the  Recent  Legislation — Outrages  in 
Dublin — The  Irish  National  League — Outbreak  of  the  Egyptian  War — Deportation  of  Arabi — El  Mahdi  and 
Gordon — The  Weak  Side  of  Gladstone's  Character — He  Attempts  to  Cope  with  the  Situation — Question  of  Re- 
forming the  Franchise — Abolition  of  the  Agricultural  Holdings  Act — Introduction  of  the  Franchise  Bill — Glad- 
stone's Address  on  that  Measure — Discriminations  in  the  Britisii  Suffrage — Prejudice  against  Agricultural  Labor — 
Provisions  of  the  New  Bill — The  Question  in  the  House  of  Lords — Shall  the  Commons  be  Prorogued  ? — Denun- 
ciations of  the  Lords — The  Bill  in  the  Autumn — Passage  of  the  Measure — The  Redistribution  Bill — General  Re- 
sults of  the  Act — Troublesome  Aspect  Abroad — The  Opposition  Rides  High — Hicks-Beach's  Amendment— The 
Death  Duties — The  Government  is  Beaten — The  Ministry  Resigns — Gladstone's  Letter  to  Albert  Victor — Acces- 
sion of  the  Marquis  of  Salisbury — The  Redistribution  Bill  is  Passed — Even  Results  of  the  Election — Increase  of 
the  Home  Rule  Contingent — This  Party  Necessary  to  Salisbury — Gladstone's  Address  to  Midlothian — He  Dis- 
cusses the  Irish  Question — Intimations  of  Political  Cooperation — Will  Salisbury  Promote  Reform  ? — Embarrass- 
ment of  Both  Parties — Question  of  Local  Self-government  for  Ireland — Silence — The  Queen's  Address  in  1886 — 
Conservatism  in  the  Ascendant — The  Debate  on  the  Address — The  Issue  Hangs  Dubious — Government  Gives 
Notice  of  Intended  Legislation — Chamberlain's  Declaration — Collings's  Amendment — Gladstone  Supports  the 
Proposition — Salisbury  Falls  and  Gladstone  Rises — "  Three  Acres  and  a  Cow  " — The  New  Cabinet — Labor 
Tumults  in  Trafalgar  Square  and  Hyde  Park — Assaults  on  Gladstone  and  his  Policy — He  Excogitates  a  Scheme 
for  Home  Rule — And  Introduces  the  Home  Rule  Bill — His  Famous  Address — History  of  Conditions — Statistics 
of  Crime — Preserving  the  Empire — Proposed  Constitution  of  Government  for  Ireland — The  Irish  Parliament — 
The  Viceroy — Great  Interest  in  the  Measure — Defections  and  Schisms — Introduction  of  the  Land  Purchase  Bill — 
Defeat  of  the  Home  Rule  Measure — Dissolution  and  Appeal  to  the  Country — Gladstone's  Address  to  Midlothian 
— Epoch  of  Gog  and  Magog — Triumph  of  the  Conservatives — Gladstone  Resigns  and  Salisbury  is  Recalled — The 
Conservative  Cabinet — Beginning  of  Coercive  Measures — Gladstone  Makes  a  Tour  and  Writes  Two  Pamphlets — 
He  Analyzes  the  Recent  Vote — Reaction  in  Favor  of  the  Liberal  Policy — Jubilee  of  the  Queen — The  Poet  Laureate 
Becomes  a  Peer — New  Alignment  of  Parties — The  Criminal  Law  Amendment  Bill — Gladstone  is  Counted  with 
the  Home  Rulers — Irish  Land  Bill  of  1887 — Balfour  Attacks  the  National  League — Gladstone's  Opposition — 
Persecution  of  the  Irish  Leaders — "  Parnellism  and  Crime" — The  Forgery  in  the  London  Times — Parnell  Brings 
Suit  and  Obtains  a  Verdict — Completeness  of  his  Triumph — The  O'Shea  Divorce  and  Fall  of  Parnell — Gladstone's 
Course  from  1888  to  1891 — Plis  Eightieth  Milestone — He  Becomes  the  "  Woodchopper  of  Hawarden  " — Unabated 
Interest  in  Public  Affairs — The  Salisbury  Administration — Triumph  of  the  Reactionary  Policy — Irish  Immigra- 
tion— Government  with  Rod  and  Cord — By-elections  Favorable  to  the  Liberals — Parnell's  Altitude  under  Scan- 
dalous Assaults — Gladstone  Assents  to  the  Cant — Parnell's  Last  Struggle — Division  of  the  Irish  Party — Removal 
of  Restrictions  on  Roman  Catholics — The  Veteran  Statesman  in  the  House — W^aiting  for  a  Reaction — Dissolution 
of  Parliament  and  Triumph  of  the  Liberals — End  of  the  Salisbury  Government — Gladstone  again  Prime  Minister 
— He  Introduces  the  Second  Home  Rule  Bill — A  Great  Hour  in  his  Life- — The  Prime  Minister  Explains  the 
Pending  Measure — How  the  Irish  Parliament  Should  be  Constituted — The  Peroration — The  Home  Rule  Bill  is 
Passed — Rejected  by  the  Lords — The  Reversal  of  Victory — Other  Measures  of  the  Session — Gladstone  Resigns  the 
Premiership — Rosebery  Accedes  to  the  Place — Gladstone's  Last  Speech  and  Defiance  of  the  Lords,      -      559-612 

CHAPTER    XXVII. 

Retirement  and  Last  Years. 
The  Going  Forth  of  the  Rivals — Scene  where  Beaconsfield  Departed — Gladstone  Says  Nothing — His  Physical 
and  Intellectual  Condition  in  1894 — His  Improvement  in  Health  and  Spirits — His  Avocations  and  Places  of  Visi- 
tation— Gladstone's  Home  Life — Mrs.  Gladstone  and  her  Place  in  the  Drama — Dorothy  Mary  Drew — The  Poem 
Ad  Dorotheam — Gladstone  Does  Not  Forget  the  World — His  Occasional  Utterances  on  Great  Subjects — His 
Address  on  Armenia — An  Extract  Illustrative — The  Veteran's  Last  Communication  to  the  House  of  Commons — 
He  Speaks  for  the  Armenians — The  Irish  Question  Revives — Gladstone  Writes  a  Public  Note  to  the  House  of 
Commons — He  Visits  Kiel  and  Participates  in  the  Dedication  of  the  Baltic  Ship  Canal — His  Great  Influence — 
At  Hawarden  He  Continues  his  Attacks  on  the  Ottoman  Empire — Collapse  of  the  Rosebery  Ministry — The 
Armenian  Question  in  Poetry — Gladstone's  Articles  on  the  "Future  Life" — His  Theses  on  Immortality — He 
Arranges  his  Papers  and  Prepares  Material  for  his  Bi(^raphy — He  Pleads  for  the  Greeks  against  the  Turks 
— His  Facial  Neuralgia — He  Passes  the  Winter  on  the  Mediterranean — Nature  of  his  Malady — His  Decline 
in  the  Spring  of  1898 — He  Faces  the  Ordeal — Event  and  Circumstances  of  his  Death — Summary  of  his  Life  and 
Character,  ._---......         613-623 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS. 


PAGE 

William  Ewart  Gladstone.  .  Frontispiece 
Group  of  Illustrious  Men  Born  in  1809.  27 
Sir  John  Gladstone     .  .  .  .  31 

House  in  which  Gladstone  was  Born  .  ;^^ 
Eton  College  and  Cricket  Grounds    .  39 

Christchurch  College,  Oxford         .  .     43 

Magdalen  College,  Oxford  .  .         47 

St.  John's  College,  Oxford  .  .  -51 
View  of  Mount  yEtna         ...  59 

William  IV 62 

Scene   at  the  LLustings  in   the  Days  of 
Open  Elections       ....  69 

Blackfriars  Bridge,   London   .  .  .72 

(reorge  Canning         ....  77 

13aniel   O'Connell  Addressing  his  Coun- 
trymen       ......      85 

Queen  Victoria,  1843.  ...         88 

Coronation  of  Queen  Victoria — Admin- 
istration of  the  Sacrament.         .         .     90 
Cotton  Mills,  Manchester  ...  92 

Daniel  O'Connell  .....    loi 

Hawarden  Castle         ....        106 

Lord  Macaulay  (Photograph  by  Maull 
&  Fox)        .  .  .  .         .         .110 

The    Strand    and    St.    Mary's    Church, 
London  .  .  .         .         .         .121 

Sir  Robert  Peel      .  .         .         .         .126 

Corn  Law  Agitation   .  .  .  .        131 

Albert,   Prince  of    Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, 
Prince  Consort  .  .  .         .         -133 

Maynooth  College      .  .  .         .137 

Thomas  Moore      .  .  .         .         .142 

Election  Meeting  in  Ireland       .  .        145 

Scene  during  the  Potato  Famine  .  .    147 

Tailpiece.  .....        148 

The  present  Baron  Rothschild  .  .152 
Muster    of    the    Irish    at    Mullinahone 

under  Smith  O'Brien,  1848         .         .    154 
William  Smith  O'Brien       .  .  .158 

B.  Disraeli  in  his  Youth         .         .  .160 

Lord  Elgin         .         .         ,         .         .       165 


PAGE 

.  172 
174 

.  179 
181 

.   201 


Spencer  Horatio  Walpole 

The  Piraeus,  Athens  . 

Lord  Henry  Brougham. 

Earl  of  Aberdeen 

Louis  Napoleon  Bonaparte    . 

Duke  of  Wellington  (From  an  original 
portrait  by  Salter)        ....  203 

Funeral  of  the  Duke  of  AVellington     .       205 

William  E.  Gladstone  as  Chancellor  of 
the  Exchequer  under  the  Earl  of 
Aberdeen,  age  forty-two     .  .         .   209 

Albert  of  Saxe-Coburg  and  Gotha,  the 
late  Prince  Consort     ,         .         .         .219 

Field  Marshal  Lord  Raglan  (Com- 
mander in  Chief  of  the  British  Army 
in  the  Crimea)     .....  224 

Marshal  A.  J.  J.  Pelissier  (Commander  in 
Chief  of  the  French  Army  in  the 
Crimea)        •.         .         .         .         .         .225 

Siege  of  Sebastopol     ....       226 

The  Fall  of  Sebastopol — Capture  of  the 
Malakhoff  Tower     ....       228 

1.  Before  Sebastopol.  The  Redan  from 
the  Old  Advanced  Trench,  July  14, 1855  231 

2.  The  Battle  of  the  Tchernaya.  The 
Attack  upon  the  Sardinian  Picket, 
September  5,  1855  ....       231 

3.  The  Valley  of  Death.  Before  Sebas- 
topol, June  3,  1855.  .         .  .231 

Tailpiece  ......   233 

John  Bright  .....        235 

Miss    Nightingale    in    the    Hospital    at 
Scutari      ......       236 

Sir  Edmund  Lyons,  G.C.B.,  Command- 
ing Squadron  in  Black  Sea;  Sir  Charles 
Napier,  K.C.  B.,  Commanding  Baltic 
Fleet  ;  and  Allied  Naval  Commanders  239 
The  Allied  Commanders  of  the  Crimea 
(King  of  Sardinia,  Lord  Raglan,  Mar- 
shal Pelissier,  General  Bosquet,  Omar 
Pasha)  ......  242 


23 


24 


LIST    OF    ILLUSTRATIONS. 


PACK 

Lord  Palmerston,         ....       244 

Lord  John   Russell.         .         .         .         .  249 

Vienna  Conference      .         .         .         .251 

The  Peace  Commemoration,  1856 — The 
Fireworks,  Sketched  from  the  Mall,  in 
St.  James  Park    .         .         .         .         .261 

Sir  Colin  Campbell      .         .  .       -11 

General  Havelock  Greeted  by  the  Chris- 
tians whom  he  Savetl       .         .  .278 
Edward     Geoffrey     Stanley    (Earl     of 
Derby)     ......       283 

William    E.    Gladstone,  1S59   (as   Chan- 
cellor of  the   Exchequer   under    Pal- 
merston)     ......  290 

Richard  Cobden  .         .         .         .         .294 

Members'  Lobby,  Llouse  of  Commons  .  296 
Victor  Emmanuel,  King  of  Italy         .       318 
Tailpiece  .         .         .         .         .         -2,3^ 

Garibaldi  Addressing  the  Italian  Parlia- 
ment   .......   336 

Gladstone  in  1864       .         .         .  .352 

John  Stuart  Mill     .....  374 

J3almoral  Castle  .....       392 

Conflict  of  the  Authorities  with  Reform 

League  Demonstration,  July  23,  1866  396 
Visit  of  Tithe  Proctor  in  Ireland  .         .413 
The     Irish     Remedy  —  Emigration     to 
America  .         .         .         .         .         .418 

Gladstone  Addressing    the    House     of 
Commons.         .  .  .         .         .421 

Gladstone  (for  the  first  time  Prime  Min- 
ister, December  4,  1S6S)  .         ,       433 
Dickens,  1861.         .....  456 

Capture    of   British    Tourists  by  G^eek 
Brigands       ......   462 

Alexander  II,  Emperor  of  Russia        .       465 
Sir  John  Alexander  Macdonald,  Premier 
of  Canada         .....       474 

A  Critical  Question  i.i  the  House  .  .481 

Prince  of  Wales  .....       483 

Views  of  Trinity  College,  Dublin  (Col- 
lege Green,  Viceregal  Lodge,  St.  Ste- 
phen's Green,   Trinity  College,   Chief 
Secretary's  Lodge) ....       490 

Disraeli  Entertaining  the  House  with  a 
Story      ......       496 

Incident  of  Gladstone's  Campaigning    .   502 
Bishop  of  Canterbury  Delivering  an  Ad- 
dress at  Albert  Hall    .         .         .         .510 


PAGE 

522 


532 
535 

537 

539 


Sir  William  Vernon  Harcourt     . 
AVilliam    ]i.    Gladstone   in   his   Study  at 

Hawarden         ..... 
NV'illiam   I,  Emperor  of  Germany  . 
Earl  of  Beaconsfield    .... 
Abdul  Hamid-Khan  II,  Sultan  of   Tur- 

l^ey 

"  Peace  with   Plonor  "  (Return   of  Bea- 
consfield from  the  Berlin  Conference).  548 
Victoria,  Empress  of  India         .         .       554 
William  E.  (Hadstone  in  1880  (Time  of 

Midlothian  Campaign)     .  .  .        556 

The   Midlothian  Campaign      .  .  .   558 

Fenian  Disorders  in  Ireland — Attack  on 
a  Police  Van         .....   560 

William  O'Brien  .....       562 

Fight  between  Land  Leaguers  and  Police   564 
The  Greenwich  Memorial  Chair.         .       565 
Distress    in    Ireland — Eviction   of   Ten- 
ants ......        567 

Liberation     of      Prisoners      from     Irish 
Jails  .......    570 

Unionist  Demonstration  in  Belfast.      .        572 
Joseph  Chamberlain        ....  577 

Robert  Arthur  Cecil,  Marquis  of  Salis- 
bury.        ......       580 

Great  Labor  Parade  in  Trafalgar  Square   5 86 
Introduction     of     Home     Rule     Bill — 

Gladstone's  Peroration        .         .         .   589 
Division  of   the  House  of  Commons  on 
the  Irish  Home  Rule  Bill.    The  Ayes, 
311.      The  Noes,  341  ....  591 

Lord  Randolph  Churchill    .         .         .       594 
Jubilee  of  Queen  Victoria — Her  Majesty 

Arriving  at  Westminster  .  .        596 

Arthur  James  Balfour     ....  598 

Charles  Stewart  Parnell        .  .  .       600 

"  The  Woodchopper  of  Hawarden  "       .  602 
Justin  McCarthy.         ....       604 

Election  Scene  of  1892  ....  605 

William  E.   Gladstone.      For  the  fourth 
time  Prime  Minister    ....  607 

The   British  Notion  of   an   Irish   Parlia- 
ment    .......   6og 

Archibald     Philip     Primrose,      Earl     of 
Rosebery      .         .         .         .         .         .611 

Mrs. Gladstone  (From  a  late  photograph)   614 
William    Iv    Gladstone   and    his   Grand- 
daughter, Dorothy  Drew     .  .  .617 


LIFE  AND  TIMES 


OF 


WILLIAM  E.  GLADSTONE. 


CHAPTER  I. 

The    Year    1 809. 

N  the  year  1809  the  paint  was  still  fresh  on  the  only  steamboat 
in  the  world.  Thus  far  and  no  farther  had  proceeded  the 
evolution  of  human  passage  by  waterways  and  rivers.  The 
means  of  destruction  were  scarcely  greater  than  in  the  Middle 
Ages.  In  January  of  that  year  Sir  John  IMoore,  at  Coruna, 
won  his  fatal  victory  over  the  French  with  flintlock  muskets.  The  art  of 
life  was  still  in  its  rudimentary  stages.  In  Great  Britain  it  cost  fourteen 
pence  to  send  a  letter  three  hundred  miles,  and  in  the  United  States  seven- 
teen cents  for  the  same  service.  There  was  not  an  iron-barred  tramway  on 
the  face  of  the  globe.  Men  hoped  to  fly  through  the  air,  but  had  no 
expectation  of  being  propelled  by  a  steam  engine.  In  that  year,  after  his 
sixt3^-sixth  ascension,  died  Francois  Blanchard,  first  aeronaut  to  cross  the 
English  Channel  Perhaps  in  the  farm  sheds  of  the  world  there  was  not 
a  single  plow  with  iron  or  steel  moldboard.  The  harvesters  in  the  wheat 
fields  of  all  countries,  from  Poland  to  the  AUeghanies,  cut  their  grain  with 
sickles.  The  most  rapid  transit  on  earth  or  sea  was  the  sailing  vessel  ;  and 
that  might  be  surpassed  in  speed,  for  short  distances,  by  race  horses.  On 
the  physical  side  the  old  civilization  perpetuated  itself  The  industrial 
genius  of  man  was  displayed  only  in  local  enterprises  and  curious  handi- 
crafts. The  age  of  astounding  invention  and  overwhelming  material  progress 
had  not  yet  risen  on  mankind. 

Of  general  knowledge  the  conditions  were  in  a  correlative  stage  of 
development.  In  1809  William  Smith,  the  father  of  English  geology,  was 
preparing  his  earth-map  of  England  and  Wales — a  work  which  became  the 
foundation  of  all  subsequent  inquiry.  On  January  20  of  that  year  William 
McClure  read  in  Philadelphia-  his  great  paper  on  the  "  Geology  of  the 
United  States,"  thus  laying  the  basis  of  that  science  which  was  to  destroy 
the  old  superstitious  concept  of  the  earth,  and  to  make  known  to  man  the 
true  character  of  the  Mobe  which  he  inhabits. 


26  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

Our  knowledge  of  the  solar  system  at  that  date  was  limited  to  the 
orbit  of  Uranus.  Neptune  must  lie  far  off  for  thirty-seven  years,  awaiting 
the  genius  of  Adams  and  Leverrier  to  make  him  known.  Four  asteroids 
— Ceres,  Pallas,  Juno,  and  Vesta — had  been  discovered  within  the  ten 
preceding  years.  These  were  supposed  to  constitute  the  whole  group  of 
fragmentary  worlds  between  Mars  and  Jupiter.  The  scale  on  which  the 
universe  is  built  was  as  yet  but  vaguely  conjectured.  The  constitution  of 
the  earth  and  of  our  atmospheric  envelope  was  but  little  understood.  Sir 
Humphry  Davy,  just  recovering  from  the  long  nervous  fever  with  which 
he  was  prostrated  on  his  discovery  of  sodium  and  potassium,  was  reaching 
out  rapidly  for  the  bottom  elements  of  the  natural  world.  It  was  three 
years  before  that  horrible  explosion  in  the  Felling  colliery  led  him  to  the 
invention  of  the  safety  lamp  and  the  preservation  thereby  of  the  manufac- 
turing interests  of  Great  Britain.  The  greatest  telescope  in  the  world  was 
the  twent\-foot  reflector  of  the  elder  Herschel.  Young  Fraunhofer,  at  the 
age  of  twenty-two,  still  in  the  Institute  of  IMunich,  was  experimenting  with 
his  lenses  and  prisms.  Through  them,  ten  years  later,  was  to  come  to  him 
the  revelation  of  the  significant  lines  of  the  spectrum,  indicating  the  funda- 
mental unity  and  common  plan  of  universal  nature. 

The  social  and  domestic  condition  of  mankind  was  sufficiently  significant. 
Until  within  a  year  the  slave  trade  had  been  openly  practiced  under  the 
Constitution  by  the  merchants  of  the  United  States.  In  Great  Britain  the 
system  of  servitude  was  still  protected.  In  Demerara,  Trinidad,  and  Jamaica 
the  sugar  plantations  were  worked  by  Negro  slaves  under  the  lash  of  the 
driver  and  the  banner  of  St.  George.  In  the  home  life  of  England  the 
evolution  had  proceeded  so  far  that  there  were  those  who  doubted,  and  even 
disputed,  the  right  of  husbands  to  whip  their  wives  as  freely  as  they  might 
whip  slaves  ;  but  such  scoffers  at  the  existing  order  were  few  and  without 
great  influence  !  The  divorced  wife  in  England,  whatever  might  have  been 
her  own  blamelessness  or  the  horrid  crimes  of  the  husband  that  led  to  the 
separation,  was  positively  interdicted  from  visiting  or  seeing  her  own 
children  !  The  remaining  shadows  of  the  Middle  Ages  reached  out  far  into 
the  domestic  condition  of  all  the  civilized  peoples  of  Europe  and  America. 

The  civil  and  political  state  of  the  world  was  sufficiently  significant. 
History  had  appointed  France,  and  France  had  appointed  Napoleon,  to  lead 
a  supreme  revolutionary  campaign  against  the  ancient  order  in  Europe.  At 
this  time  it  appeared  that  the  campaign  was  to  be  successful,  and  that  the 
old  regi77ie  was  about  to  be  extinguished.  The  monarchies  of  Europe  were 
crouching  close  to  the  ancient  walls,  hoping  that  the  storm  might  pass  and 
that  they  might  again  emerge  to  sit  on  thrones  and  hunt  in  parks  and 
gather  beauty  of  doubtful  reputation  into  courts  where  fashion  reigned  and 
virtue  was  not  even  remembered  ! 


Oliver  Wendell  Holmes. 
Felix  Mendelssohn. 
Abraham  Lincoln, 


William  Ewart  Gladstone. 


Charles  Robert  Darwin. 
Edgar  Allan  Poe. 
Alfred  Tennyson. 


GROUP   OF   ILLUSTRIOUS   MEN    BORN    IN    li 


28  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

America,  becoming  automatic,  still  fluctuated  with  the  disturbances  and 
storms  of  the  mother  continent.  Our  agitations,  however,  were  like  those 
of  the  sea  on  a  shore  far  distant  from  the  center  of  the  storm.  The  Napo- 
leonic era  was  at  its  height.  In  that  year  was  made  the  treaty  of  Bayonne, 
in  which  Napoleon  declared  the  end  of  the  Bourbon  rule  in  the  Spanish 
peninsula.  The  French  ascendency  was  extended  from  Gibraltar  to  the 
Niemen,  and  from  the  Strait  of  Messina  to  the  Baltic.  The  Corsican 
established  his  brothers  and  other  subordinates,  gathered  out  of  law  offices 
and  livery  stables,  in  power  over  a  dozen  states.  They  were  the  7iovi 
homines  of  new  Europe,  and  stood  in  willing  league  with  the  French 
empire,  then  five  years  old.  For  the  time  it  appeared  that  the  new  order 
reached  by  revolution  in  America  was  confirming  itself  coincidentally  with 
the  extinction  of  the  old  order  destroyed  by  a  revolution  in  Europe. 

On  our  side  of  the  sea  the  third  Virginian  president,  following  the 
second  of  the  same  dynasty,  acceded  to  the  chief  magistracy  of  the  republic 
in  the  spring  of  1809.  The  counter  currents  of  the  British  reaction  in 
America  and  the  Gallic  sympathies  of  our  people  ran  together  throughout 
the  old  Thirteen  States,  and  broke  in  long  lines  of  foam  and  political 
agitation.  The  brief  Federal  ascendency  in  our  politics  was  ended,  and  the 
moderate  Democracy,  impersonated  in  Madison  and  his  Secretary  of  State, 
was  the  prevailing  type  of  American  politics.  Jefferson  had  retired  to 
Monticello.  Hamilton  was  five  years  dead.  John  Ouincy  Adams  was 
Minister  of  the  United  States  at  St.  Petersburg.  Henry  Clay  had  descended 
from  the  Senate  to  become  the  leader  of  the  House  of  Representatives. 
The  elder  Adams  was  contributlnor  to  the  Boston  Patriot  his  letters  in 
vindication  of  the  policy  of  his  unpopular  administration.  Children  born 
at  the  time  of  the  funeral  of  Washington  were  completing  their  tenth  year. 
In  England  Pitt  and  Fox  were  three  years  dead,  and  the  British  ministry 
was  striving,  by  means  fair  and  foul,  to  revive  the  continental  coalition 
against  the  Emperor  Napoleon.  That  conqueror,  on  the  6th  of  July  in  this 
year,  fought  his  great  battle  of  Wagram,  and  on  the  i6th  of  the  following 
December  divorced  Josephine,  in  order  to  secure  for  himself  an  heir  whose 
mother  should  be  a  Hapsburg, 

This  volume  is  intended  to  show  the  life  line  of  a  great  man  drawn 
through  the  intricacies  of  the  nineteenth  century,  beginning  with  the  year 
1809.  The  story  is  at  once  personal  and  historical.  It  is  a  life  and  a 
history.  As  it  is  personal,  it  suggests  at  the  start  the  consideration  of  other 
personalities  in  relation  to  the  great  personality  whose  career  is  here  de- 
lineated. The  year  of  the  birth  of  Gladstone  was  remarkable  as  the  date 
of  the  beginning'of  a  great  number  of  personal  forces  in  both  Europe  and 
America — forces  which  have  interwoven  themselves  in  a  magical  manner 
with  the  intellectual,  moral,  and  political  woof  of  our  era.     Perhaps  no  other 


THE    YEAR     1 809.  29 

year  of  this  century  has  given  birth  to  such  a  prodigious  array  of  human 
forces.  It  is  well  that  the  attention  of  English  and  American  readers  be 
directed  to  the  brilliant  galaxy  of  names  whose  possessors  appeared  on 
this  earthly  scene  of  action  in  the  year  1809. 

Early  in  that  year,  namely,  on  the  12th  of  February,  and  coincidently 
on  the  same  day,  were  born  Charles  Robert  Darwin  in  England  and  Abra- 
ham Lincoln  in  America.  The  one  was  destined  to  emancipate  the  human 
mind  from  its  traditional  concepts  of  the  natural  history  of  life  on  our  earth 
and  to  discover  and  expound  the  bottom  principles  of  that  magnificent  biol- 
ogy which  may  almost  be  called  the  beginning  of  human  knowledge.  The 
other  was  destined  in  another  sphere  of  great  and  beneficent  activity  to 
become,  under  historical  causation,  the  emancipator  of  a  race  of  slaves. 
While  the  one  was  to  lift  the  mind  of  man  to  an  orderly  and  sublime  con- 
cept of  the  natural  world,  the  other  was  to  lift  the  political  life  of  one  of  the 
greatest  of  peoples  from  the  horrid  quagmire  of  slavery  and  to  establish  the 
nation  which  he  was  called  to  rule  in  the  days  of  trial  on  a  new  foundation 
of  justice  and  equal  rights  for  all. 

In  this  year  came  Alfred  Tennyson,  the  chief  singer  of  the  Vic- 
torian era,  and  Edgar  Allan  Poe,  destined  to  leave  a  tremendous  impress 
on  American  song.  The  one  was  to  gather  up  the  expiring  light  of  the  age 
of  romantic  poetry  and  to  blend  it  with  the  refined  and  careless  and  sorrow- 
fringed  poetry  of  the  nineteenth  centur}-.  The  other  was  to  look  pro- 
foundly into  the  gloom  of  song,  to  see  and  describe  weird  faces  in  the  dusk 
of  hope,  and  to  chant  melodies  all  too  few,  born  of  the  universal  spirit,  and 
nursed  by  his  own  somber  and  erratic  genius. 

In  this  year  came  also  Mendelssohn  the  Great,  Hebrew  by  birth,  and 
teaching  his  father  to  say  :  "  Formerly  I  was  the  son  of  my  father,  and  now 
I  am  the  father  of  my  son!"  Over  the  confusion  of  the  century  his  Ora- 
torios still  rise.  Though  dying  at  the  age  of  thirty-eight,  his  music  reaches 
out  to  immortality. 

We  may  not  here  enumerate  all  or  even  a  majority  of  the  great  names 
whose  possessors  came  into  the  world  with  the  )ear.  1S09.  They  were  all 
the  products  of  the  revolutionary  storms  that  preceded  them.  They  were 
the  progeny  of  violence  and  heroic  action.  Already,  however,  there  had 
come  to  the  fathers  and  mothers  of  these  children  of  1809  the  beginning  of 
peace  and  hope.  The  light  of  a  new  era  was  rising,  when  the  travails  of 
motherhood  announced  the  awakening  to  life  of  this  remarkable  group  of 
personages. 

One  of  the  most  distinguished  of  these  great  characters  is  the  subject 
of  this  "  Life  and  Times."  We  shall  endeavor  to  follow  with  -fidelity  the 
lines  of  his  career  across  the  disturbed  but  hopeful  drama  of  the  tremen- 
dous century  to  which  he  has  belonged. 


30  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

CHAPTER  II. 
Ancestry  and  Boyhood. 

HE  Gladstone  family  is  of  Scotch  origin.  The  stock  seems  to 
have  originated  in  the  country  of  Clyde.  There  was  an  estate 
belonging  to  the  family  in  Upper  Clydesdale,  and  another  in 
the  town  of  Biggar,  also  in  Lanarkshire.  It  was  out  of  the 
Biggar  branch  that  the  subject  of  this  memoir  took  his  rise. 
The  name  of  the  family  is  found  as  far  back  as  the  sixteenth  century,  and 
more  frequently  in  the  old  local  documents, of  the  seventeenth.  The  town 
records  of  the  Clyde  district  are  flecked  here  and  there  with  the  transactions 
of  men  of  this  stock.  One  of  the  estates  was  called  Arthurshiel  ;  and  this 
was  held  by  a  member  of  the  family  named  John,  and  was  sold  by  him  in 
1680  to  one  James  Brown,  of  Edmonstoun. 

The  name  of  the  family  first  occurs  as  Gledstanes,  and  afterward  as 
Gladstanes,  or  Gladstane.  Not  until  about  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth 
century  do  we  find  the  name  in  its  more  recent  form  of  Gladstone,  and  not 
until  1835  did  Sir  John  Gladstone,  acting  under  a  royal  \'\CQns,&,  Jinally  drop 
the  terminal  jt  from  the  ancestral  nomen.  The  analysis  of  the  nomen  shows 
the  lowland  Scottish  word  gled,  signifying  a  hawk,  and  stanes,  a  dialectical 
variation  for  stones.  Thus  the  original  sense  was  the  Hawk  Stones;  and 
this  doubtlessly  embodied  some  unknown  tradition  of  the  family.  Smith,  in 
his  Life  of  Gladstone,  suggests  that  the  name  of  the  family  may  have 
reference  to  some  custom  connected  with  land  tenure  in  Scotland  in  the 
Middle  Ages.     This  is  merely  conjectural. 

The  name  Gladstanes  is  an  example  of  the  strange  disposition  shown 
among  nearly  all  peoples  to  get  their  names  into  the  plural  form.  It  has 
required  the  force  of  literature  to  crystallize  the  majority  of  modern  proper 
names  and  keep  them  in  the  singular  form.  There  is,  for  example,  a  natural 
disposition  among  the  folks  to  call  members  of  the  Wood  family  Woods,  or 
those  of  the  John  family  Johns,  or  those  of  the  William  family  W^illiams. 
In  the  case  before  us  the  name  was  finally  fixed  in  the  English  spelling  of 
Gladstone,  and  the  pronunciation  gldd-stun,  with  a  strong  accent  on  the 
first. 

In  the  early  part  of  the  eighteenth  century,  the  Biggar  branch  of  the 
family  was  represented  by  William  Gladstane,  who  was  a  manufacturer  of 
malt  and  a  man  prosperous  in  his  household.  His  estate,  on  his  death  in 
1728,  descended  to  his  oldest  son  John,  then  thirty-one  years  of  age,  who 
took  up  his  father's  business  in  Lanark.  He  died  in  1756,  transmitting  a 
respectable  property  to  his  family  of  eleven  children,  of  whom  five  were 
sons. 


ANCESTRY    AND    BOYHOOD. 


31 


From  this  time  the  history  of  the  family  is  better  known.  John  Glad- 
stane,  third  son  of  him  who  died  in  1756,  had  the  estate  called  Mid  Toft- 
combs.  He  took  in  marriage  Christian  Taverner,  and  received  with  her  a 
considerable  property.  She  was  of  her  husband's  rank,  being  of  that  mid- 
dle folk  who  constitute  the  bone  and  sinew  of  England.  From  this  mar- 
riage we  have  a  fourth  son,  Thomas  Glad- 
stone (for  the  name  now  takes  this  form),  who 
was  born  just  after  our  Washington,  namely, 
on  the  3rd  of  June,  1732,  and  lived  to  the  year 
1809.  In  him  the  Gladstonian  qualities  be- 
gan to  express  themselves  strongly.  He  was 
a  man  of  vigorous  constitution,  preserving  his 
powers  to  the  ripe  age  of  seventy-seven,  and 
lacking  only  a  few  months  of  witnessing  the 
birth  of  that  grandson  who  was  to  confer  an 
imperishable  luster  on  the  ancestral  name  for 
all  time  to  come. 

Thomas  Gladstone  also  showed  the  pow- 
erful commercial  instinct  which  has  expressed 
itself  in  the  thought  and  purpose  of  the  family 
for  more  than  a  century  and  a  half.     He  also  ^'^  J""^  Gladstone. 

had  an  adventurous  spirit,  held  in  check  by  that  same  prudential  and 
rational  restraint  which  ever  marked  the  career  of  the  statesman.  Thomas 
Gladstone  left  his  father's  house  when  he  was  still  a  boy,  and  went  to  Leith, 
where  he  became,  on  his  own  responsibility,  a  grain  merchant  of  distinction. 
He  chose  for  his  wife  Helen  Neilson,  of  Springfield,  and  by  her  became 
the  father  of  sixteen  children,  of  whom  twelve  came  to  adult  years.  The 
family  instinct  was  strong  upon  him.  The  crowd  that  grew  up  around  his 
hearth,  instead  of  terrifying,  only  inspired  him  ;  and  he  was  able  in  due 
time  to  push  out  all  of  his  progeny  into  honorable  and  useful  careers. 

The  eldest  son  of  this  big  group  of  hardy,  practical  Scotch-English 
children  was  John  Gladstone,  father  of  the  subject  of  this  study  He  was 
a  native  of  Leith,  and  was  born  in  1763.  It  was  the  year  of  that  treaty  of 
Paris  by  which  Great  Britain  obtained  from  France  her  vast  territorial 
empire  in  America,  and  by  which  Spain  gained,  as  if  in  trust  for  the  possible 
republic  of  the  United  States,  her  almost  limitless  province  of  Louisiana. 
It  was  the  third  year  of  George  HI,  and  the  fortieth  of  Louis  XV  of 
France. 

John  Gladstone,  more  than  any  of  his  predecessors,  maybe  said  to  have 
created  the  fortunes  of  the  family.  He  was  a  man  of  boundless  but  strictly 
practical  activities.  He  began  in  business  at  first  with  his  father  at  Leith, 
but  was    not   destined   to    remain    in   that  limited  sphere.     The  work  of  a 


32 


LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 


maltster  was  too  simple  and  small  for  his  ambitions.  He  remained  with  his 
father,  however,  until  he  was  twenty-one  years  of  age,  and  was  then  sent 
in  a  tentative  way  with  a  shipload  of  grain  to  Liverpool.  The  consignee 
was  a  certain  Corrie,  a  grain  merchant  of  that  city.  Here  the  world  opened 
to  the  younger  Gladstone  in  wider  vision  than  ever  before.  The  commer- 
cial spirit  possessed  him.  On  the  wharves  of  the  Mersey  he  saw  men  as 
trees  walking.  The  merchant,  Corrie,  at  once  discovered  in  the  young  man 
the  great  qualities  which  he  possessed;  and  John  Gladstone  responded  to 
the  overture,  and  became  an  assistant  in  the  establishment  of  Corrie  and 
Company. 

In  the  scrapped-out  biographies  of  John  Gladstone  an  account  is  given 
of  that  event  by  which  he  first  greatly  distinguished  himself  in  the  commer- 
cial world.  On  a  certain  occasion,  when  the  grain  crops  of  Europe  had 
failed  and  the  supply  in  Liverpool  was  correspondingly  short,  John  Gladstone 
was  sent  by  the  firm  to  the  new  United  States  to  purchase  there  and  send 
back  as  cheaply  as  possible  twenty-four  shiploads  of  grain.  He  undertook 
his  mission  with  confidence  ;  but  on  reaching  New  York  and  Philadelphia 
he  found  that  there  had  been  a  short  crop  also  on  our  side  of  the  Atlantic, 
and  that  neither  the  accessible  supply  nor  the  price  warranted  the  carrying 
out  of  his  home  instructions.  To  do  so  would  be  still  further  to  involve  the 
house  which  he  represented. 

It  was  a  case  in  which  responsibility  had  to  be  taken.  The  twenty-four 
ships  were  waiting  to  receive  their  cargoes.  With  remarkably  good  judg- 
ment young  Gladstone  turned  about  and,  by  an  examination  of  current 
prices  of  produce  in  America  and  in  Liverpool,  purchased  and  filled  his 
ships  with  such  articles  as  bore  the  largest  profit,  returned  to  Liverpool,  and 
rescued  his  employers  from  impending  bankruptcy.  He  was  thereupon  made 
a  member  of  the  firm,  under  the  title  of  Corrie,  Gladstone,  and  Bradshaw. 

The  business  of  this  house  was  thrust  out  in  many  directions.  In  the 
course  of  sixteen  years  the  gentlemen  Corrie  and  Bradshaw  retired,  or 
were  bought  out  by  John  Gladstone  ;  and  the  firm,  by  the  admission  of  his 
brother  Robert,  became  John  Gladstone  and  Company.  No  other  commer- 
cial house  in  the  most  commercial  city  of  the  world  showed  greater  enter- 
prise. A  trade  was  established  with  Russia,  through  the  port  of  Riga.  In  the 
West  Indies,  and  particularly  in  Demerara,  trading  stations  were  established. 
Gladstone  was  elected  President  of  the  West  India  Association  of  Merchants. 

The  remaining  five  brothers  at  Leith  left  the  ancestral  city  and  came 
to  Liverpool,  where  they  established  themselves  in  various  branches  of 
trade.  When  the  monopoly  of  the  East  India  Company  expired,  in  the 
year  1814,  a  ship  of  the  house  of  Gladstone  was  the  first  private  vessel  to 
reach  Calcutta. 

At  the  close  of  the  eighteenth  century  John  Gladstone  was  thirty-seven 


ANCESTRY    AND    BOYHOOD. 


33 


34  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIyVM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

years  of  age.  His  first  wife  died  without  children,  Shortly  afterward  he 
took  in  second  marriage  Ann  Robertson,  daughter  of  Andrew  Robertson, 
of  Stornoway,  and  from  this  marriage  are  descended  the  family  of  four 
sons  and  two  daughters,  of  which  William  Ewart  Gladstone  was  the  fourth 
and  last  of  the  sons. 

It  should  be  remarked  in  this  connection  that  the  period  just  preceding 
the  statesman's  birth  was  that  in  which  British  commerce  passed  through 
the  severest  trial  it  has  ever  known.  That  commerce  was  the  industrial 
expression  of  the  naval  supremacy  of  Great  Britain.  It  was  to  destroy  this 
supremacy  that  Napoleon  did  his  utmost  in  establishing  his  system  of 
Continental  blockade.  The  declared  motive  of  this  system  was  to  obliterate 
the  commerce  of  England  and  to  let  her  ships  lie  rotting  on  the  sea.  After 
Trafalgar  it  was  the  one  great  aim  of  Napoleon  to  ruin  his  enemy  by 
shutting  her  out  of  the  ports  of  Europe  and  America. 

All  of  this  bore  hard  on  such  a  merchant  trader  as  John  Gladstone,  but 
it  also  tended  to  bring  out  the  full  force  of  his  character.  There  were  times, 
about  the  year  1807,  when  it  seemed  that  the  Napoleonic  system  would 
prevail.  In  a  single  year  the  commerce  of  Liverpool  fell  off  by  a  hundred 
and  forty  thousand  tons.  In  such  an  emergency  the  merchants  besought 
Parliament  to  cancel  such  acts  as  the  so-called  Orders  in  Council,  to 
remove  the  restrictions  on  neutral  trade,  and  in  particular  to  open  the 
way  for  the  restoration  of  commerce  with  the  United  States  and  the 
ports  of  South  America.  Nor  can  it  be  doubted  that  had  the  petitions 
sent  up  to  Parliament  from  the  commercial  cities  of  England  been 
favorably  entertained  our  second  war  with  the  mother  country  might  have 
been  obviated. 

John  Gladstone,  having  becdme  wealthy,  became  an  important  factor 
in  the  politics  of  Liverpool.  He  was  a  conservative,  as  are  nearly  all  mer- 
chants of  all  countries;  for  trade  is  timid,  and  money,  the  vehicle  of  trade, 
is  more  timid  still.  In  the  year  181 2,  an  exciting  political  contest  was  held 
in  Liverpool,  in  which  Henry  Brougham  and  the  Radical  candidate  Creevey 
were  defeated  by  the  Conservatives  Canning  and  Gascoyne.  The  result 
was  attributed  in  considerable  measure  to  the  influence  of  Gladstone,  who 
was  henceforth  recognized  as  one  of  Canning's  powerful  supporters.  In 
course  of  time  the  rich  merchant  was  himself  made  a  member  of  Parliament, 
and  then  a  baronet,  by  Sir  Robert  Peel,  in  1845.  ^^  lived  to  the  great  age 
of  eighty-eight,  and  died  in  the  year  1851,  living  to  see  the  premonitions  of 
his  greater  son's  ascendency  in  the  political  history  of  England, 

William  Ewart  Gladstone  was  born  on  the  29th  of  December,  1809. 
At  the  present  time,  all  of  the  brothers  and  sisters  except  himself  only  have 
passed  away.  Captain  John  Neilson  Gladstone  died  in  1863,  and  Robertson 
Gladstone    in    1875.      Sir    Thomas    Gladstone,   Bart.,   died    in    18S9.     The 


ANCESTRY    AND    BOYHOOD.  35 

two  daughters,  Ann  McKenzie  and  Helen  Jane,  remained  unmarried  to 
their  death.  The  statesman  exemplifies  better  than  any  of  his  brothers  and 
sisters  the  great  longevity  of  the  family,  as  well  as  the  extraordinary  intel- 
lectual capacity  and  hardihood  of  the  race. 

Wealth  is  one  of  the  foundations  of  British  society.  The  poor  do  not 
fare  well  in  England.  The  sons  of  the  poor  in  our  ancestral  islands,  as 
well  as  the  sons  of  the  poor  on  the  Continent,  find  a  difficult  emergence 
from  the  hard  environment  which  poverty,  with  its  consequent  obscurity, 
draws  around  them.  Only  in  times  of  revolutionary  tumult  do  the  poor 
emerge  in  any  part  of  Europe.  The  Gladstone  family  by  the  first  quarter 
of  the  present  century  had,  by  the  enterprise  and  successful  adventure  of 
the  merchant  John  Gladstone,  become  distinguished  for  wealth.  There  was 
no  longer  any  question  that  the  children  of  the  baronet  might  receive  the 
best  education  and  obtain  the  best  opportunities  in  life. 

We  may  mention  here  some  efforts  of  the  curious  to  connect  the  states- 
man with  the  nobility,  and  even  the  royalty,  of  England  and  Scotland.  The 
family  was,  as  we  have  said,  of  the  m'iddle  class  of  the  English.  Nor  does 
it  appear  that  the  Gladstones  have  themselves  taken  pains  to  find  in  their 
veins  a  strain  of  blood  better  than  that  of  the  common  lot.  It  is  claimed, 
however,  that  Andrew  Robertson,  of  Stornoway,  maternal  grandfather  of 
William  Ewart  Gladstone,  was  a  descendant  of  Henry  HI,  and  also  in  some 
complex  way  of  Robert  Bruce.  The  line  upward  to  this  great  origin  in- 
cludes Lady  Jane  Beaufort,  queen  of  James  I  of  Scotland,  who  was  in  the 
line  of  the  Bruce.  Sir  Bernard  Burke  has  made  it  tolerably  clear  that  the 
ancestry  of  Andrew  Robertson  runs  up  to  this  marriage  of  Lady  Jane  to 
King  James.  Lucy,  one  of  the  biographers  of  the  statesman,  preserves  a 
note  written  by  William  Henry  Gladstone  in  the  year  1881,  in  which  the 
writer  says  of  his  maternal  grandmother,  who  was  second  daughter  of  Lord 
Braybrooke,  that  she  was  Mary  Neville,  through  whom  William  Ewart 
Gladstone  is  connected  with  Lord  Chatham,  William  Pitt,  Lord  Granville, 
and  other  notables  of  English  history.  Suffice  it  that,  at  the  time  of  the 
birth  of  him  who  was  so  greatly  to  distinguish  the  ancestral  name,  the  family 
of  Gladstone,  though  of  the  middle  class,  had  become  distinguished  some- 
what by  remote  and  traditional  kinship  with  the  great,  and  much  more  by 
the  honest  acquisition  of  large  wealth  sufficient  to  remove  from  all  the  sons 
and  daughters  of  Sir  John  Gladstone  the  necessity  of  personal  exertion 
other  than  the  stimulus  of  inborn  ambitions,  and  all  care  as  to  the  acquisi- 
tion of  additional  worldly  fortune. 

Thus,  within  two  days  of  the  end  of  the  year  1809,  we  contemplate  the 
birth  of  William  Ewart  Gladstone,  youngest  of  the  four  sons  of  John  Glad- 
stone, Bart.  It  was  the  beginning,  in  the  very  crisis  of  the  disturbed  and 
chaotic  era,  of  a  personal  force  which  was  to  reach  across  almost  the  entire 


36  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

expanse  of  the  greatest  of  the  centuries,  and  to  make  itself  distinguishable 
somewhat  as  an  energy  among  the  tremendous  impulses  of  general  causation. 

The  very  earliest  impressions,  other  than  the  maternal,  on  the  mind  of 
the  child  Gladstone  were  those  of  commerce  and  politics.  He  was  born  in 
the  very  heart  of  the  commercial  world,  at  a  time  when  the  powerful  forces 
of  trade  were  extending  into  the  political  realm  and  beginning  to  modify 
in  a  large  way  the  policies  of  States  We  may  thus  discover,  coincidently 
with  the  first  stage  of  Gladstone's  life,  the  reaction  of  the  environment 
which  sooner  or  later  conduces  in  large  measure  to  the  character  and  am- 
bitions of  every  human  being,  Gladstone  born  under  other  conditions 
would  have  been  some  other  than  himself  While  heredity  had  prepared 
him,  history  had  prepared  his  place.  The  conjunction  of  the  two  has  given 
the  great  personal  result  which  we  discover  in  him  who  has  been,  without 
controversy,  the  first  public  man  of  Great  Britain  in  our  age. 

A  few  illustrative  incidents  have  been  preserved  of  the  first  years  of 
this  remarkable  personage.  When  he  was  four  years  old  he  was  taken  by 
his  mother  to  call  on  Hannah  More.  That  distinguished  woman  gave  him 
a  little  book,  and  he  remembered  the  act  and  what  she  said  to  him — namely, 
that  he  had  just  come  into  the  world,  and  she  was  just  going  out  of  it.  This 
must  have  occurred  in  1813.  In  the  following  year  the  child  was  taken 
by  his  father  to  Edinburgh  at  a  time  when  the  guns  in  the  castle  were 
fired  in  jubilation  for  the  capture  of  Paris  by  the  allies  ;  it  was  the  first  ab- 
dication of  Napoleon.  Gladstone  to  his  old  age  remembered  to  have  heard 
the  windows  shake  when  the  g-reat  Sfuns  boomed. 

Other  proofs  of  his  precocious  memory  are  related.  He  has  told  us 
himself  that  when  he  was  still  a  babe  on  the  floor  he  took  notice  of  the  odd 
pattern  of  his  nurse's  dress,  and  remembered  it  always.  This  may  be  re- 
garded as  the  farthest  luminous  point  discoverable  by  him  by  the  backward 
look  into  the  otherwise  total  oblivion  of  infancy.  In  like  manner  he  was 
able  to  remember  a  circumstance  which  occurred  when  he  was  but  three 
years  old.  This  was  the  uproar  and  jubilee  of  the  inhabitants  of  Liverpool 
on  the  occasion  of  the  ratification  of  the  election  of  George  Canning  to 
Parliament,  in  the  latter  part  of  18 12.  The  house  of  John  Gladstone,  in 
Rodney  Street,  was  illuminated  on  that  occasion,  and  the  tumult  in  the 
neiorhborhood  was  so  o-reat  as  to  excite  the  wonderincr  interest  of  the  child.* 
The  statesman  had  also  a  distinct  recollection  of  Waterloo,  and  w^as  Avont 

*  The  statesman,  on  his  seventieth  birthday,  addressing  a  delegation  of  Liverpool  people  who  had  gone  to 
Hav\-ardeu  to  congratulate  him,  said  in  a  renniniscent  way:  "  You  have  referred  to  my  connection  with  Liverpool, 
and  it  has  happened  to  me  singularly  enough  to  have  the  incidents  of  my  personality,  the  association  of  my  per- 
sonality, if  I  may  so  speak,  curiously  divided  between  the  Scotch  extraction,  which  is  purely  and  absolutely  Scotch 
as  to  every  drop  of  blood  in  my  veins,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  a  nativity  in  Liverpool,  which  is  the  scene  of  my 
earliest  recollections.  And  very  early  those  recollections  are ;  for  I  remember,  gentlemen,  what  none  of  you 
could  possibly  recollect :  I  remember  the  first  election  of  Mr.  Canning  in  I,iverpool." 


ANCESTRY    AND    BO V HOOD.  ^"^^ 

to  tell  how  a  Welsh  girl  who  served  in  the  ancestral  home  in  Liverpool 
used  to  boast,  that  the  Welsh,  a  million  slrong,  under  Sir  Williams  Wynn, 
had  gone  over  to  Spain  "  to  fight  Boney  !"  We  may  not  forget  in  this  con- 
nection that  the  boy  Gladstone  from  the  wharves  of  the  Mersey  might  look 
across  to  the  mountains  of  Wales,  and  that  he  gathered  therefrom  his  first 
distinct  impressions  of  natural  scenery. 

Besides  these  few  glimpses  of  the  child  life  of  Gladstone,  for  which  we 
are  indebted  to  his  own  memory,  there  is  little  or  nothing  to  relate  of  his 
first  years  other  than  that  he  ate  and  slept  and  grew  and  came  to  the  age 
when  his  formal  education  must  be  undertaken.  This  was  done  when  he 
reached  his  twelfth  year.  Already  he  had  received  from  his  mother  the 
rudiments  of  knowledge.  She  was  a  Scotch  mother,  and  the  father  was  a 
Scotchman.  That  sufficed  to  insure  strictness  and  conservatism  and  moral 
prudence  in  the  Gladstone  home. 

Those  who  have  considered  carefully  the  characters  of  the  father  and 
mother  discover  in  the  statesman  a  happy  union  of  the  best  elements  of 
each.  Gladstone's  robustness,  his  physical  strength,  his  mental  energy,  love 
of  affairs,  business  capacity,  willingness  to  work  out  a  large  part  of  his  life 
over  budgets  and  estimates,  and  his  healthy  half-commoner  blood  came  from 
his  father,  the  merchant,  the  burgher,  the  municipal  magnate  turned  prac- 
tical politician,  the  member  of  Parliament,  and  possible  baronet.  But  the 
premier's  sympathy,  susceptibility  to  impressions,  cool  enthusiasm,  willing- 
ness to  progress,  but  only  from  untenable  to  more  tenable  ground,  and  in 
general  his  affectional  and  half-poetic  dispositions  were  derived  from  the 
mother;  and  to  her  formative  hand  and  will  he  also  owed  his  instruction 
in  the  rudiments  of  learning. 

It  is  not  of  record  precisely  to  what  point  in  his  primary  studies  the 
boy  had  advanced  when  the  age  arrived  for  sending  him  away  to  school. 
The  child  was  precocious  to  a  degree.  We  know  from  absolute  demon- 
stration that  his  abilities  and  attainments,  even  in  early  boyhood,  were  quite 
phenomenal.  The  broad-minded  and  discerning  John  Gladstone  perceived 
the  possibilities  that  were  in  his  son's  life  and  character,  and  became  duly 
anxious  to  put  in  his  way  the  best  possible  opportunities  for  education. 
There  was  a  likelihood, « /rz'^r?',  that  the  cautious  and  deliberative  merchant 
would  make  a  conservative  choice  in  the  matter  of  a  school  so  important 
to  the  methodical  and  successful  development  of  his  promising  son. 


LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

CHAPTER  III. 

At   Eton    and    Oxford. 

HE  first  crisis  in  young-  Gladstone's  life  came  in  the  fall  of  1821. 
After  much  deliberation  the  father  chose  Eton  as  the  place  for 
the  first  stao-e  in  academic  traininof.  Eton  was  the  oldest  and 
withal  the  strictest  of  those  public  establishments  devised  in 
mediaeval  England  for  the  scholastic  training  of  boys.  The 
Eton  school  was,  and  is,  of  almost  world-wide  fame.  It  was  founded  by 
Henry  VI  in  1441.  The  first  building  was  erected  at  that  date,  and  the 
school  was  opened  in  the  following  year. 

The  little  town  of  Eton  is  twenty-one  miles  west-southwest  from 
London,  on  the  bank  of  the  Thames.  The  place  is  still,  after  the  lapse  of 
four  and  a  half  centuries,  only  a  small  town,  having  scarcely  more  than  three 
thousand  inhabitants.  But  for  the  school  which  has  given  name  to  the 
locality  its  place  on  the  map  might  be  neglected.  At  the  first,  King  Henry 
provided  that  his  college  should  be  supported  with  revenues  derived  from 
the  priories  which  had  been  suppressed  by  his  father,  Henry  V.  Such  was 
the  beginning  of  those  endowments  which,  augmented  from  many  sources, 
have  increased  until  thev  now  orreatlv  exceed  a  hundred  thousand  dollars 
per  annum. 

In  Gladstone's  day  the  school  of  Eton  was  by  no  means  what  it  has 
since  become.  It  was  in  September  of  182 1  that  the  boy  was  put  there 
to  undergo  the  discipline  of  )outh.  He  was  a  strong,  patient,  and  talented 
lad,  deeply  impressed  w^th  the  importance  of  doing  his  best  and  of  submit- 
ting to  authority.  He  was  destined  to  remain  for  six  years  subject  to  the 
system  of  academic  education  then  in  vogue  and  to  gain  therefrom,  in  spite 
of  its  faults  and  tyrannies,  much  more  than  its  logical  valuation  in  results. 
We  may  say,  once  for  all,  that  hardly  anything  could  be  further  removed 
from  the  vital  and  vitalizing  processes  of  a  modern  school  than  were  the 
dry  curriculum  and  disciplinary  despotism  of  Eton  at  the  close  of  the  first 
quarter  of  our  century.  And  we  may  add  that  few  things  could  be  more 
striking  than  the  superiority  in  character,  intellect,  and  purpose  of  the  boy 
Gladstone  to  the  average  unambitious,  flabby,  albuminous  youngster  of  our 
age  about  to  enter  college. 

It  cannot  fail  of  interest  to  note  with  some  particularity  the  nature  of 
the  collegiate  training  to  which  the  lad  William  E.  Gladstone  was  now  to 
be  subjected.  The  subject  has  an  independent  value  as  well  as  a  specific 
value  in  relation  to  him  who  was  to  become  the  leading  statesman  of  Great 
Britain.  The  school  does  not  make  the  man.  The  school  is  the  product 
of  a  c^iven  ao;e  and  condition,  and  that  agre  and  condition  contribute  also  the 


AT    ETON    AND    OXFORD. 


39 


youth  without  which  the  school  would  be  naught.  The  question  is,  in  view 
of  these  facts  and  principles,  to  determine  in  what  way  and  in  what  degree 
the  school  influences  its  pupils,  shapes  their  characters,  and  directs  their 
growth  and  ambitions  in  the  formative  period  of  life. 

The  school  of  Eton  has  had  for  several  centuries  a  great  name.  It 
has  for  a  long  time  stood  at  the  head  of  the  sub-colleges  of  Great  Britain. 
We  have  noted  the  circumstances  of  the  foundation.  Oxford  and  Cam- 
bridge, as  is  well  known,  have  each  a  group  of  colleges  locally  associated 
with  the  mother,  and,  so  to  speak,  under  her  outspread  wings.  Eton  differs 
from  such  colleges  in  being  displaced  and  set  in  a  sort  of  independent 
relation  at  a  distance.  The  same  is  true  of  the  similar  schools  of  Win- 
chester and  Westminster.  In  general  the  idea  has  been  at  Eton  to  prepare 
young  men  of  the  favored  classes  for  the  universities.  At  the  beginning 
of  this  century,  and  perhaps  to  the  present  day,  Eton  inclines  strongly  to 
Oxford.  When  Gladstone  was  an  Etonian  the  institution  might  be  regarded 
as  an  Oxford  feeder.  But  the  youth  leaving  Eton,  and  being  chosen  for 
university  promotion,  might  go  to  either  university  as  he  would. 

We  fortunately  possess  a  strong  and  trustworthy  sketch  of  the  general 
character  of  the  so-called  "  Royal  School  of  Eton  "  at  a  date  just  subsequent 


.  »A!*: 


ETON   COLLEGE   AND   CRICKET   GROUNDS. 


40  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

to  Gladstone's  promotion  therefrom  to  Oxford.  In  the  Edinburgh  Review 
for  April  of  1830  may  be  found  an.article,  written,  as  we  believe,  by  Macvey 
Napier,  at  that  time  editor  of  the  powerful  quarterly,  giving  a  history  in 
outline  and  a  critique  of  the  Eton  school.  From  this  we  are  able  in  fancy  to 
revisit  the  institution  and  to  study  its  curriculum  and  discipline  as  they  were 
at  the  time  when  the  future  premier  of  England,  from  his  twelfth  to  his  eight- 
eenth year,  was  a  student  there.  The  fundamental  and  almost  the  only  object 
in  the  course  of  study  was  to  make  the  boys — who  must  be  at  the  date  of 
their  entrance  between  eight  and  sixteen  years  of  age,  and  have  been  "born 
in  England  of  lawfully  married  parents  "—proficient  in  the  Latin  and  Greek 
languages.  The  contemporary  reviewer  says  :  "  The  only  subjects  which  it 
is  professed  to  teach  are  the  Greek  and  Latin  languages,  as  much  divinity 
as  can  be  gained  from  construing  the  Greek  Testament  and  reading  a 
portion  of  Tomline  on  the  Thirty-nine  Articles,  and  a  little  ancient  and 
modern  geography." 

The  school  was  divided  into  an  upper  college  and  a  lower.  The  upper 
consisted  of  four  classes,  or  forms,  and  the  lower  of  two  classes,  making  six 
in  all.  There  would  be  thus  a  large  excess  of  students  in  the  upper  college. 
In  the  lower  college  there  would  be  only  the  boys  of  the  first  two  forms  ; 
but  these  forms  would  be  more  largely  attended  than  the  others — being 
first.  In  the  year  1829  the  upper  college  had  three  hundred  and  nineteen 
students,  and  the  lower  two  hundred  and  ninety-three.  The  students,  viewed 
as  a  whole  group  and  without  respect  to  the  classes  in  which  they  were 
distributed,  were  divided  into  two  groups,  the  first  of  which  was  designated 
as  king's  scholars,  or  collegers,  and  the  other  as  oppidans,  or  town  boys. 
The  collegers  had  superior  advantages,  for  they  were  maintained  gratui- 
tously. They  were  distinguished  from  the  oppidans  by  a  uniform.  They 
had  a  different  residence  in  the  town  and  school  from  that  assiofned  to  the 
commoners,  and  were,  indeed,  the  undergraduate  aristocracy  of  the  insti- 
tution. 

The  text-books  in  use  at  Eton  were  as  follows  :  i.  An  Introduction  to 
the  Latin  Tongue;  for  the  use  of  youth.  2.  Rudiments  of  Greek  Gram- 
mar; for  use  in  the  Royal  School  of  Eton.  3.  Greek  Authors;  for  use  in 
the  Royal  School  of  Eton.  Being  a  collection  of  extracts  from  the  Greek 
historians,  prepared  by  one  of  the  masters  of  the  school.  4.  Roman  Authors; 
for  use  in  the  Royal  School  of  Eton.  Being  a  collection  from  the  Latin 
writers  in  the  same  style  as  the  preceding.  5.  Greek  Poets;  for  use  in  the 
Royal  School  of  Eton.  A  compilation  of  extracts.  6.  A  Comparative 
Atlas  of  Ancient  and  Mode7'7i  Geography;  for  the  use  of  Eton  school,  to 
which  there  was  an  index.  7.  The  Greek  New  Testament;  for  occasional 
reading.  8.  Bishop  George  Tomline's  Treatise  on  the  Thirty-nine  Articles 
of  the  ChtLrch  of  England. 


ETON    AND    OXFORD, 


41 


Such  was  the  course  of  study  in  that  institution  which,  in  the  year 
1830,  had  the  reputation  of  being  the  first  undercollege  in  the  United 
Kingdom  !  In  it  all  there  was  not  a  single  trace  of  natural  science.  Neither 
physics  nor  chemistry  is  heard  of.  Neither  botany  nor  astronomy  in  the 
most  rudimentary  and  descriptive  forms  is  found  even  by  suggestion.  The 
whole  history  of  mankind  and  of  institutions  is  virtually  omitted  !  The 
readings  from  the  Greek  historians  were  so  fragmentary  as  to  give  no  o-en- 
eral  and  continuous  account  of  the  classical  nations.  The  readino-s  were 
had  for  linguistic  discipline,  and  with  hardly  any  respect  to  history.  No 
account  of  literature  or  of  any  of  the  politer  humanities  was  to  be  found  in 
the  course.  Of  mathematics  there  was  not  the  slightest  trace  !  There  was 
neither  logic  nor  rhetoric  ;  neither  mental  philosophy  nor  moral ;  neither 
criticism  nor  modern  languages;  neither  knowledge  of  man  nor  study  of 
natural  phenomena  from  the  beginning  to  the  end.  Even  the  desultory 
linguistics  were  studied  out  of  all  relation  with  human  development  and 
progress ! 

The  Edinburgh  reviewer  gives  the  following  account  of  what  was  done 
day  by  day  in  Eton  school  at  the  time  when  Gladstone  was  a  student  there: 

"  In  a  common  week  there  is  one  whole  holiday,  on  which  no  school 
business  is  done  ;  but  every  boy  is  required  to  go  twice  to  chapel  ;  one  half- 
holiday  on  which  there  are  two  school-times  and  one  chapel  ;  and  on  Satur- 
day there  are  three  school-times  and  one  chapel.  On  each  of  the  three 
other  days  there  are  four  school-times,  three  of  which  last  respectively  for 
three  quarters  of  an  hour  ;  the  other  has  no  fixed  length,  but  probably  aver- 
ages for  each  boy  about  a  quarter  of  an  hour.  The  school-times  would 
therefore  amount  to  less  than  eleven  hours  in  a  week.  The  boys  are,  how- 
ever, expected  to  come  prepared  into  school :  so  that  some  time  is  occupied 
in  previous  study,  and  every  boy  hears  the  lesson  construed  at  his  tutor's 
house  before  he  appears  in  school." 

The  writer  goes  on  to  estimate  that  in  a  week  a  youth  in  the  fifth  form 
would  have  to  read  about  seventy  lines  of  the  Iliad,  the  same  amount  of  the 
/Eneid,  two  or  three  pages  from  his  book  of  selections  called  the  Gj'eek 
Writers,  and  a  like  quantity  from  the  Roman  Writers,  thirty  or  forty  lines 
from  the  Greek  Poets,  and  twenty  or  thirty  verses  from  one  of  the  Gospels 
in  Greek  or  from  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles,  All  the  poetry  which  was  to  be 
construed  had  to  be  learned  by  heart.  Once  a  week  there  was  a  lesson 
from  the  Greek  grammar;  and  also  a  selection  from  Ovid  or  Tibullus 
There  must  be  one  exercise  in  Latin  prose  ,  a  Latin  poem  of  as  many  as 
twenty  verses,  and  another  lyric  of  five  or  six  stanzas.  It  was  from  such  a 
course  as  this  that  the  discipline  of  an  Eton  boy  was  to  be  obtained  three 
quarters  of  a  century  ago. 

The  reviewer  whom  we  are  here  followinsf  next  takes  into  considera- 


42  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM     E.    GLADSTONE. 

tion  the  text-books  of  Eton,  and  finds  them  to  be  of  the  poorest  quaht}-. 
He  says  that  they  "are  marked  by  ahnost  every  fault  under  which  such 
treatises  can  labor.  They  contain  much  that  is  useless  and  much  that  is  in- 
accurate ;  they  exclude  much  that  is  highly  useful ;  they  are  written  without 
a  proper  arrangement  and  harmony  of  parts  ;  the  rules  are  not  precise,  the 
examples  are  ill  chosen;  and  a  large  part  of  the  Latin  and  the  whole  of  the 
Greek  grammar  is  written  in  Latin."  The  writer  goes  on  to  call  attention 
to  the  particular  errors  and  imperfections  with  which  the  texts  were  dis- 
ficrured.  The  book  desionated  as  the  Greek  Poets  contained  some  short 
extracts  from  Homer  and  Hesiod;  a  few  idyls  and  epigrams  ;  extracts  from 
Callimachus,  Apollonius,  and  Bion.  The  selections  were  not  arranged  in 
chronological  order  or  in  accordance  with  any  other  rational  principle  ;  and 
the  biographical  sketches  and  notes  were  short  and  unsatisfactory.  The  col- 
lection of  Greek  prose  writings  was  of  about  the  same  compass  and  charac- 
ter, as  was  also  the  book  of  selection  from  writers  in  Latin  prose.  The  best 
opportunity  furnished  anywhere  in  the  course  for  some  glimpses  of  real 
human  history  was  furnished  in  the  extracts  from  Livy. 

We  may  note  in  the  next  place  two  of  the  prevailing  customs  at  Eton 
in  Gladstone's  day — customs  which  were  to  hold  their  own  against  all 
humanity  for  many  years  afterward.  These  were  fagging  and  flogging.  The 
boys  of  the  first  two  classes  might  be  fagged  by  the  young  fellows  of  the  up- 
per forms.  Indeed,  all  the  boys  on  entering  the  institution  were  put  into  a 
fag;  that  is,  into  a  company  of  a  dozen  or  more  like  themselves,  who  must 
do  the  bidding  of  the  upper-class  group  to  which  the  particular  fag  or  class 
was  assigned.  The  slavery  and  shame  of  the  system  could  hardly  be  de- 
scribed. The  boy  below  was  the  servant  of  the  boy  above.  The  upper- 
class  student  might  do  almost  as  he  would  with  his  servant.  The  tasks 
which  were  assio-ned  to  a  fae  were  humiliatinof  and  severe,  and  to  this  was 
added  all  manner  of  abuse  and  brutality.  The  wonder  remains  that  any 
aspiring  and  proud  lad  could  have  been  subjected  to  so  degrading  a  system 
and  yet  preserve  a  show  of  manly  character.  Of  course  the  tables  were 
soon  turned  by  those  who  were  the  victims  of  fagging.  When  they  reached 
the  upper  forms,  they  themselves  became  the  tyrants.  It  was  then  their 
opportunity  to  be  avenged  by  exercising  the  same  sway  over  the  new 
students  that  had  been  wielded  over  themselves.  Human  nature  is  always 
the  same,  and  the  servant  makes  a  hard  master. 

Eton  offered  no  prizes.  It  offered  no  stimulus  to  ambition.  It  prom- 
ised nothing  unless  it  was  promotion  to  the  University.  And  such  promo- 
tion was  not  made  on  any  basis  of  merit,  but  simply  on  seniority.  Those 
who  had  been  longest  at  Eton  might  be  promoted  in  certain  numbers,  and 
who  the  favored  were  was  determined  by  lot.  Young  fellows  might  thus 
remain  at  the  school  until  they  were  twenty-two  years  of  age. 


ETON    AND    OXFORD. 


43 


CHRISTCHURCH    COLLEGE.    OXFORD. 

But  if  there  was  no  noble  motive  before  the  student,  there  was  enough 
compulsion  behind  !  The  discipline  was  by  flogging.  The  students  were 
flogged  for  every  kind  of  offense.  It  was  the  common  method  of  punish- 
ment. In  case  any  boy  was  derelict  he  was  stripped  to  his  back  and  flogged 
with  a  leather  strap.  The  flogging  was  done  by  the  head  master  of  Eton, 
and  the  amount  of  exercise  which  he  had  in  this  work  made  him  an  expert. 
It  was  not  only  the  new  beginners  and  younger  boys  who  were  flogged,  but 
all  alike  w^ere  amenable  to  the  punishment.  Young  fellows  who  were  well 
along  in  their  teens  were  publicly  stripped  and  whipped  in  the  prescribed 
manner.  At  the  time  when  the  boy  Gladstone  was  at  Eton  there  were  ap- 
proximately six  hundred  lads  in  attendance,  and  probably  no  day  went  by 
without  the  customary  flagellations.'^ 

It  was  into  this  inane  and  barren   realm  of  studv  that   Gladstone  was 


*  Whipping  was  the  order  of  the  day.  John  Delaware  Lewis  is  authority  for  the  statement  tiiat  on  one  occa- 
sion an  upper-class  man,  twenty  years  of  age,  who  was  about  to  take  in  marriage  a  young  lady  of  Windsor  and 
was  completing  his  last  work  at  school,  came  one  evening  late  to  the  house  of  his  tutor.  For  being  late  he  was 
severely  flogged  by  the  head  master,  Goodford.  On  another  occasion  eighty  boys  were  at  one  time  barred  out  for 
being  tardy,  and  all  were  soundly  whipped.  Among  the  number  was  a  lad  who  entered  the  military  service,  rose 
to  distinction,  commanded  in  the  Peninsular  war,  and,  standing  under  a  tree  near  Mont  St.  Jean  on  the  i8th  of 
June,  1815,  gave  the  command,  "  Up,  guards!  and  at  them!  " 


44  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

introduced  four  months  before  completing  his  twelfth  year.  It  was  this 
course  of  instruction  and  discipline  that  he  must  undergo.  Fortunately  he 
was  enabled  by  his  father's  influence  with  the  Duke  of  Newcastle  to  be- 
come a  colleger,  that  is,  a  king's  scholar.  This  gave  him  some  importance, 
and  doubtless  exempted  him  in  a  degree  from  the  grosser  abuse  to  which 
the  oppidans  were  subject.  The  likelihood  of  his  succeeding  as  a  student 
certainly  lay  wholly  within  himself.  Out  of  the  Etonian  curriculum  as  little 
might  be  expected  as  is  indicated  in  the  last  article  which  we  shall  quote 
from  the  Edinburgh  reviewer:  "The  consequence,"  says  he,  "  of  this  desul- 
tory mode  of  reading  desultory  books  is  that  when  an  Etonian  goes  either 
to  Cambridge  or  to  Oxford  and  is  questioned  as  to  the  extent  of  his  studies, 
he  can  only  answer  that  besides  Horace  and  part  of  Virgil  and  the  Iliad  he 
has  read  nothing.  He  has  not  read  a  single  book  of  Herodotus,  or  Thucyd- 
ides,  or  Xenophon,  or  Livy,  or  Po'.ybius,  or  Tacitus;  he  has  not  read  a  sin- 
gle Greek  tragedy  or  comedy,  he  is  utterly  ignorant  of  mathematical  or  phys- 
ical science,  and  even  of  arithmetic ;  the  very  names  of  logical,  moral,  or 
political  science  are  unknown  to  him.  Modern  history  and  modern  lan- 
guages are  of  course  out  of  the  question.  Is  it  creditable  to  the  largest  and 
most  celebrated  public  school  of  England  that  such  should  be  the  result  of 
five  or  six  years'  residence,  at  an  age  when  childhood  is  past  and  the  mind 
is  capable  of  developing  its  powers  .^" 

It  was  therefore  in  the  boy  Gladstone,  and  not  in  his  school,  that  the 
promise  of  greatness  resided.  We  should  note,  however,  that  there  were  a 
few  extraneous  and  incidental  conditions  at  Eton  that  were  favorable  alike 
to  strength  of  body  and  growth  of  mental  power.  In  the  matter  of  athletic 
sports  little  was  left  to  be  desired.  There  was  back  of  the  establishment 
of  Eton  a  large  area  of  open  field  where  the  bo^^s  might  play  in  their  rough 
English  fashion,  and  where  the  struggle  for  mastery  might  always  be  wit- 
nessed. There  on  the  other  side  flowed  the  river.  Both  the  field  and  the 
river  constantly  invited  the  six  or  seven  hundred  young  fellows  poured  out 
from  the  confines  of  their  scholastic  keep  to  contest  with  each  other  with 
racket  and  oar  for  superiority  and  fame. 

More  important,  however,  than  the  opportunities  for  physical  develop- 
ment at  Eton  were  certain  independent  institutions  that  grew  up  perhaps 
among  the  students  themselves.  One  of  these  was  the  Union  Debating 
Society,  in  which  Gladstone  would,  out  of  the  nature  of  the  case,  distinguish 
himself  Another  was  the  Etonian  periodicals  that  were  devised  from  time 
to  time  as  a  possible  vent  for  the  literary  aspiration  of  the  young  fellows  at 
school.  One  such  manuscript  journal  was  called  Apis  Matina,  or  the 
Morning  Bee.  This  was  established  by  Winthrop  Mackworth  Praed  in 
1820.  The  Bee  was  soon,  however,  converted  into  the  Etonian,  the  last 
number  of  which  was    issued   two    months   before   Gladstone   entered   the 


ETON    AND    OXFORD.  45 

school.  Then  came  the  Eton  Miscellany ,  in  the  originating  of  which  the 
future  statesman  had  a  good  part.  The  editor  was  Bartholomew  Bouverie, 
but  young  Gladstone  wrote  much  more  of  the  periodical  than  he.  Smith, 
in  his  Life  of  Gladstone,  has  preserved  an  extract  from  the  introduction  to 
the  Miscellany,  which  was  written  by  the  young  man  during  the  latter  part 
of  his  stay  at  Eton.  The  aspirant  to  journalistic  fame  says  :  "  In  my  present 
undertaking  there  is  one  gulf  in  which  I  fear  to  sink,  and  that  gulf  is  Lethe. 
There  is  one  stream  which  I  dread  my  inability  to  stem,  it  is  the  tide  of 
popular  opinion.     I  have  ventured,  and  no  doubt  rashly  ventured — 

'  Like  little  wanton  boys  that  swim  on  bladders, 
To  try  my  fortune  in  a  sea  of  glory, 
But  far  beyond  my  depth.' 

At  present  it  is  my  hope  alone  that  buoys  me  up  ;  for  more  substantial 
support  I  must  be  indebted  to  my  own  exertions,  well  knowing  that  in  this, 
land  of  literature  merit  never  wants  its  reward.  That  such  merit  is  mine  I 
dare  not  presume  to  think  ;  but  still  there  is  something  within  me  that  bids 
me  hope  that  I  may  be  able  to  glide  prosperously  down  the  stream  of  public 
estimation,  or,  in  the  words  of  Virgil, 

'To  hasten  the  journey  with  a  prosperous  report.'" 

It  was,  doubtless,  the  opportunity  which  he  found  at  Eton  to  write  and 
to  speak'  that  led  him  subsequently,  far  down  the  journey  of  life,  to  say  in 
a  lecture  to  the  Etonian  boys  :  "  My  attachment  to  Eton  increases  with  the 
lapse  of  years.     It  is  the  queen  of  schools." 

The  Eton  Miscellany  flourished  during  the  greater  part  of  Gladstone's 
years  at  school.  He  was  the  most  prolific  writer  in  the  college  paper. 
Thirteen  contributions  from  him  are  pointed  out  in  the  first  volume.  He 
had  friends  and  competitors.  One  of  these  was  Arthur  Henry  Hallam,  son 
of  the  English  historian,  one  day  to  become  the  subject  of  In  Memoriam, 
Another  was  George  Augustus  Selwyn,  born  in  the  same  year  with  himself^ 
afterward  Bishop  of  New  Zealand,  who  was  his  most  intimate  companion  at 
school.  Of  him  the  statesman  has  recorded  the  highest  estimate.  "  In  him- 
self," says  he,  "  he  formed  a  large  part  of  the  life  of  Eton,  and  Eton  formed 
a  large  part  of  his  life.  To  him  is  due  no  small  share  of  the  beneficial 
movement  in  the  direction  of  religious  earnestness  which  marked  the  Eton 
of  forty  years  back,  and  which  was  not,  in  my  opinion,  sensibly  affected  by 
any  influence  extraneous  to  the  place  itself.  At  a  moment's  notice  upon 
the  call  of  duty  he  tore  up  the  singularly  deep  roots  which  his  life  had  struck 
into  the  soil  of  England." 

It  is  at  once  amusing  and  highly  instructive  to  note  the  efforts  of  these 
two  ambitious  friends  to  make  themselves  known  in  the  college  journal. 
There  was  a  correspondence  column  in  the  paper  where  the  contributors 
threw  a  free  lance  at  many  things.      How  hardly,  withal,  could  any  lance  be 


46  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

called  free  that  was  hurled  from  the  precincts  of  a  college  where  geometry 
was  not  taught,  where  no  one  understood  French  or  German,  and  where 
biology  was  unknown  even  by  name  !  But  free  thought,  like  all  things  else, 
is  a  relative  term.  The  young  men  at  Eton,  no  doubt,  thought  they  had  it, 
and  thinkine  eoes  far  to  make  thinfjs  so,  even  in  a  question  of  mental 
servitude.  The  correspondence  column  in  the  Miscellany  was  called  "The 
Postman."  Young  Gladstone's  no?n  de  plume  was  Philophautasvi — a  term 
which,  if  it  signify  anything,  seems  to  imply  that  the  youth,  according  to  his 
own  thinking,  was  pursuing  something  elusive,  as  it  were  an  ignis  fatuus. 
His  contributions  were  not  lacking  in  point.  His  style,  however,  was 
always  large  and  open,  for  that  manner  is  best  in  politics. 

The  Gladstonian  style,  even  from  the  boyhood  of  the  statesman,  though 
it  was  generally  perspicuous,  lacked  in  terseness.  One  of  his  Philophan- 
tasm  articles  recounts  an  adventure  which  the  writer  had  with  the  poet 
Vergil.  When  the  youth  met  the  antique  shade  the  latter  was  reciting 
Latin  verses,  but  they  were  so  different  in  sound  and  rhythm  and  measure 
from  what  was  heard  at  Eton  that  the  young  visitant  could  not  understand 
the  poet.  Vergil,  moreover,  complained  that  the  Etonians  preferred  Horace 
to  himself,  and  sent  a  request  to  the  authorities  that  the  ^"Eneid  might  be 
occasionally  quoted  by  the  faculties  and  students.  Not  without  wit  the 
writer  makes  Vergil  say  at  the  close  of  the  interview,  "  I  know  the  Eton 
boys  hate  me  because  I  am  difficult  to  learn  !  " 

Here,  then,  was  a  small  vent  for  youthful  genius.  Of  course  English 
literature  was  ignored,  but  the  classical  was  in  vogue.  Anon  we  find  young 
Gladstone  translating  into  verse  a  chorus  from  Euripides.  On  another 
occasion  he  gives  us  a  "  View  of  Lethe,"  a  sketch  in  prose,  displaying  but 
little  invention,  but  revealing  one  of  Gladstone's  sentiments  which  bore 
strongly  in  his  youth,  namely  the  fear  that  he  himself,  coming  to  naught, 
would  be  forgotten.  The  desire  to  live  in  the  annals  of  one's  age,  if  it  be 
intense,  is  on  the  whole  a  more  energetic  form  of  ambition  than  the  hunger 
for  passing  applause  or  any  lust  of  power. 

Gladstone  was  now  in  the  stage  of  poetical  adolescence.  Nearly  all 
young  men  pass  through  this  current  of  ether  as  the  planet  of  boyhood  fol- 
lows its  prescribed  orbit.  It  is  a  kind  of  early  spring  of  sentiment  and  fancy. 
Gladstone  fixed  his  attention  on  the  oblivious  river  of  the  underworld,  and 
imagined  that  he  contemplated  immersion  therein  with  the  greatest  dread. 
Such  sentiments,  though  wholly  fictitious  in  themselves,  are  quite  real  to 
the  possessors  who  beguile  themselves  with  the  thought  that  it  is  a  great 
thinor  to  be  remembered  or  foro^otten. 

In  the  case  of  young  Gladstone,  he  views  the  matter  somewhat  objec- 
tively. He  sees  men  and  their  works  about  to  perish  in  Lethe,  and  is  able 
to  discover  the  humorous  aspect  of  the  struggle  to  escape  from  the  stream 


ETON    AND    OXFORD. 


47 


of  forgetfulness.  "  I  was  surprised,"  says  he,  "  even  to  see  some  works  with 
the  names  of  Shakespeare  and  Milton  on  them  sharing  the  common  des- 
tiny ;  but  on  examination  I  found  that  those  of  the  latter  were  some  polit- 
ical rhapsodies  which  richly  deserved  their  fate  ;  and  that  the  former  con- 
sisted of  some  editions  of  his  works  which  had  been  burdened  with  notes  and 
mangled  with  emendations  by  his  merciless  commentators.  In  other  places 
I  perceived  authors  worked  up  into  frenzy  by  seeing  their  own  compositions 
descending  like  the  rest.  Often  did  the  infuriated  scribes  extend  their  hands, 
and  make  a  plunge  to  endeavor  to  save  their  beloved  offspring,  but  in  vain. 
I  pitied  the  anguish  of  their  disappointment,  but  with  feelings  of  the  same 
commiseration  as  that  which  one  feels  for  a  malefactor  on  beholding  his 
death,  being  at  the  same  time  fully  conscious  how  well  he  has  deserved  it." 

One  important  inference  may  be  drawn  from  this  extract.  It  is  the 
cheering  fact  that  Shakespeare  and  Milton  were  not  wholly  unknown  at 
Eton  !  We  see  from  what  the  young  man  writes  that  the  aspect  of  the  cur- 
rent world  has  been  reflected  by  some  process  into  the  inclosure,  and  that 
the  Etonians  were  not  unaware  that  English  literature  existed  and  that 
even  newspapers  are  a  part  of  the  apparatus  of  human  intercourse.  We  are 
thus  able  to  read  between  the  lines  of  the  inane  linguistics  of  Eton  to  better 
forms  of  culture  than  could  be  discovered  in  the  mere  logical  examination 
of  the  curriculum. 

The  range  of  things  to  be  imitated  at   Eton  was  narrow,  and  the  sum 


MAGDALEN    COLLEGE,    OXFORD. 


48  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

of  things  taught  was  insignificant ;  but  opportuntiy  was  there — as  every- 
where. Gladstone  produced  one  poem  at  this  time  of  two  hundred  and  fifty 
verses  which  strongly  reflects  the  passing  culture  of  the  school.  His  sub- 
ject is  Richard  Coeur  de  Lion,  but  the  manner  and  matter  might  be  re- 
garded as  a  boy's  effort  to  render  Homer  in  the  style  of  Pope.  The  rhym- 
ing couplets  of  the  youth,  however,  are  pervaded  with  the  spirit  of  Dryden. 
rather  than  the  Augustan  finish  of  Pope's  method.  The  whole  thing  is  in 
the  vein  of  King  Cambyses,  but  is  nevertheless  fairly  well  done  for  a  boy 
Fixing  his  eye  on  the  Lion  Heart,  he  says: 

"Who  foremost  now  the  deadly  spear  to  dart, 

And  strike  the  javelin  to  the  Moslem's  heart  ? 

Who  foremost  now  to  climb  the  leaguered  wall. 

The  first  to  triumph,  or  the  first  to  fall  ? 

Lo,  where  the  Moslems  rushing  to  the  fight, 

Back  bear  their  squadrons  in  inglorious  flight 

With  plumed  helmet,  and  with  glittermg  lance, 

Tis  Richard  bids  his  steel-clad  bands  advance  , 

Tis  Richard  stalks  along  the  blood-dyed  ])lain, 

And  views  unmoved  the  slaying  and  the  slain; 

Ti^  Richard  bathes  his  hands  in  Moslem  blood, 

And  tinges  Jordan  with  the  purple  flood. 

Yet  where  the  timbrels  ring,  the  trumpets  sound. 

And  tramp  of  horsemen  shakes  the  solid  ground, 

Though  'mid  the  deadly  charge  and  rush  of  fight. 

No  thought  be  theirs  of  terror  or  of  flight, — 

Ofttimes  a  sigh  will  rise,  a  tear  will  flow, 

And  youthful  bosoms  melt  in  silent  woe; 

For  who  of  iron  frame  and  harder  heart 

Can  bid  the  mem'ry  of  his  home  depart? 

Tread  the  dark  desert  and  the  thirsty  sand, 

Nor  give  one  thought  to  England's  smiling  land ' 

To  scenes  of  bliss,  and  days  of  other  years  — 

The  Vale  of  Gladness  and  the  Vale  of  Tears, 

That,  passed  and  vanish'd  from  their  loving  sight, 

This  'neath  their  view,  and  wrapped  in  shades  of  night  ' 

With  his  progress  as  an  Etonian,  Gladstone  became  more  and  more 
active  and  prolific.  He  was  from  a  boy  addicted  to  composition.  We  may 
contemplate  his  pride  on  seeing  himself  in  print.  In  the  latter  years  of  his 
stay  at  Eton  his  friends  and  competitors  in  a  literary  way  were  Hallam  and 
Selwyn.  He  wrote  and  published  more  than  either  of  these  rivals.  His  con- 
tributions in  the  second  volume  of  the  Eton  Miscellany  number  seventeen. 
For  the  most  part  he  wrote  prose  ;  but  occasionally  displayed  his  powers 
in  verse.  If  Hallam  contributed  a  poem  on  "The  Battle  of  the  Boyne," 
Gladstone  followed  with  an  "  Ode  to  the  Shade  of  Wat  Tyler."  There  is 
another  extant  example  of  his  work,  called  "  Guatemozin's  Death  Song," 


ETON    AND    OXFORD.  49 

Certainly  such  compositions  were  not  great  poems ;  probably  not  poems 
at  all ;  but  they  exhibited  a  large  measure  of  ability  in  versification  and  ver- 
sified eloquence.  Probably  his  greatest  prose  contribution  at  this  epoch 
was  entitled  "  Eloquence."  In  it  we  are  able  to  discover  the  embryonic 
statesman  and  leader  of  Parliament.  Of  course  all  aspiring  young  English- 
men think  of  getting  into  the  House  of  Commons,  and  the  more  ambitious 
look  to  a  possible  place  in  government.  Young  Gladstone's  paper  shows 
that  his  mind  was  thoroughly  occupied  with  the  hope  of  public  life  and  leader- 
ship. He  describes  the  entrance  of  a  young  man  into  the  Commons,  his 
trials  there,  his  possible  triumphs,  his  rise  to  leadership,  and  his  station 
among  the  great.  The  names  of  the  popular  leaders  of  the  day  are  cited  in 
the  usual  manner  of  young  men,  one  of  whose  fallacies  it  is  to  be  always 
supposing  that  if  they  themselves  ever  come  to  leadership  it  must  be  in  the 
likeness  and  by  the  measure  of  somebody  else ! 

Among  those  whom  Gladstone  had  in  mind  was,  first  of  all,  George 
Canning.  We  have  seen  how  this  statesman  had  impressed  himself  on  the 
father  of  our  subject  on  the  occasion  of  the  Liverpool  election,  in  1812. 
Canning  furnished  the  Etonian  aspirant  with  one  of  his  models  in  the  essay 
entitled  "  Ancient  and  Modern  Genius  Compared."  It  may  surprise  us  to 
note  that  in  this  paper  Gladstone  espouses  the  cause  of  the  moderns.  We 
should  have  expected  the  other.  Fathered  and  educated  as  he  was  up  to 
this  point  of  his  career,  he  could  hardly  be  expected  to  allow  that  there  was 
anything  superior  except  in  the  past.  By  every  consideration  a  priori  the 
young  man  was  a  Tory  absolute.  Nevertheless  he  took  the  side  of  modern 
genius,  and  awarded  to  it  the  palm. 

In  this  fact  we  may  discover  one  of  the  great  qualities  of  his  life.  That 
life  was  a  growth  out  of  conservatism,  illiberalism,  Toryism,  reactionism, 
into  progressive,  though  never  audacious,  liberalism  and  progress.  That  is 
the  summation  of  the  Gladstonian  career.  Canning  died  in  August  of  1827, 
about  the  time  that  Gladstone  left  Eton.  The  event  produced  a  deep  im- 
pression on  Gladstone's  mind,  and  one  of  his  papers  contains  a  glowing  trib- 
ute to  his  ideal  statesman.  Another  whom  he  admired  and  emulated  was 
Lord  Robert  Stewart  Castlereagh,  who  had  died  five  years  previously. 
Others  were'  Lord  Morpeth  and  Edward  Geoffrey  Stanley,  who  had  been 
in  their  time  members  of  the  debating  society  of  Eton.  The  usual  error  of 
young  judgment  is  seen  in  the  comparison  which  Gladstone  makes  between 
Canning  and  Pitt — as  though  those  two  statesmen  had  been  of  approxi- 
mately the  same  magnitude  and  momentum.  In  the  conclusion  of  the  pan- 
egyric on  Canning,  the  young  writer  says: 

"  Surely  if  eloquence  never  excelled  and  seldom  equaled — if  an  expanded 
mind  and  judgment  whose  vigor  was   paralleled   only  by  its  soundness — if 
brilliant  wit — if  a  glowing  imagination — if  a  warm  heart  and  an  unbending 
4 


50  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

firmness — could  have  strengthened  the  frail  tenure,  and  prolonged  the  mo- 
mentary duration  of  human  existence,  that  man  Canning  had  been  immor- 
tal !  But  nature  could  endure  no  longer.  Thus  had  Providence  ordained 
that  inasmuch  as  the  intellect  is  more  brilliant,  it  shall  be  more  short-lived ; 
as  its  sphere  is  more  expanded,  more  swiftly  is  it  summoned  away.  Lest 
we  should  give  to  man  the  honor  due  to  God — lest  we  should  exalt 
the  object  of  our  admiration  into  a  divinity  for  our  worship — He  who  calls 
the  weary  and  the  mourner  to  eternal  rest  hath  been  pleased  to  remove  him 
from  our  eyes.  .  .  .  The  decrees  of  inscrutable  wisdom  are  unknown  to  us; 
but  if  ever  there  was  a  man  for  whose  sake  it  was  meet  to  indulge  the 
kindly  though  frail  feelings  of  our  nature — for  whom  the  tears  of  sorrow 
were  to  us  both  prompted  by  affection  and  dictated  by  duty — that  man  was 
Georcre  Cannino-." 

One  ma)'  easily  discern  in  these  youthful  effusions  of  Gladstone  the 
evidences  of  his  intellectual  manner  and  development.  Already  in  this 
eulogy  of  Canning  we  note  the  premonitions  of  that  style — rather  large  and 
ample,  flecked  with  Latin  and  turning  political-phraseward — which  the 
statesman  was  destined  to  employ  through  so  many  decades  in  his  writings 
and  discourses  to  his  countrymen.  The  writer  was  now  well  on  in  his 
eighteenth  year.  His  course  at  Eton  ended  in  the  latter  part  of  1827.  He 
had  achieved  an  enviable  reputation  at  Eton  school,  w^iere  the  tradition  of 
it  remains  to  this  day.  His  attainments  in  the  curriculum  were  first-rate. 
In  spite  of  the  poor  linguistic  apparatus,  he  had  become  well  versed  in  the 
Greek  and  Latin  classics.  Not  that  his  readings  were  ample  and  thorough 
in  the  works  of  the  orreat  Greeks  and  their  Roman  imitators;  but  he  had 
become  expert  in  those  parts  of  classicism  \vhich  he  had  been  able  to  reach. 
On  leaving  Eton,  he  was  fairly  well  trained  in  the  lore  of  the  Hellenic  and 
Latin  races.  His  mind  was  deeply  impressed  with  the  myth  and  tradition 
of  those  races.  His  orthodox  traininor  in  reliorion  had  been  strengthened 
and  confirmed  while  at  school.  He  was  a  typical  Church-of-England  young 
man,  doubting  not  at  all  the  absolute  correctness  of  the  great  Episcopal 
establishment  and  the  inerrancy  of  the  doctrines  and  practices  of  which  it 
was  the  conservator  and  visible  expression.  Any  notion  of  Gladstone's  life 
taken  as  a  whole  which  does  not  include  as  one  of  its  dominant  elements 
the  strong  religious  conservatism  and  content  of  the  man  is  thoroughly  in- 
adequate and  incorrect. 

For  about  two  years  after  leaving  Eton,  William  E.  Gladstone  assigned 
himself  to  the  care  of  Dr.  Turner,  afterward  Bishop  of  Calcutta.  The  rela- 
tion was  a  private  one.  Turner  was  a  man  of  erudition,  according  to  the 
standard  of  the  Church  of  England.  He  was  precisely  the  kind  of  an  in- 
structor to  carry  forward  the  education  of  the  graduate  Etonian  in  the  pre- 
scribed line,  and  to  fit  him   for  admission  to  the  universitv.     Thither  he  was 


ETON    AND    OXFORD. 


ST.    JOHN  S   COLLEGE   AND    BRIDGE,   OXFORD. 


now  tending.  We  have  no  exact  information  respecting  the  method  pur- 
sued by  Turner  with  his  student ;  but  we  know  that  the  instruction  now  in- 
ckided  mathematics  and  the  evidences  of  Christianity.  For  these  branches 
as  well  as  languages  and  philosophy  were  required  for  admission  to  Oxford. 
That  most  ancient  of  the  English  universities  was  now  selected  by  his 
father  and  himself  for  the  completion  of  his  academic  training.  Christ 
Church  College  was  chosen  as  the  particular  establishment.  This  institution 
was  at  the  time  the  heart  of  the  British  conservatism.  Here  the  ancients 
were  praised  as  against  the  moderns.  Here  the  past  was  believed  in  as 
against  the  distrusted  present  and  dangerous  future.  Here  the  old  and 
mediaeval  circle  of  scholasticism  was  followed  around  and  around  with  as 
little  deviation  as  possible.  Here  Toryism  in  politics  and  orthodoxy  in  re- 
ligion were  inculcated  as  the  very  foundations  of  society.  It  was  proper 
enough  that  a  young  man  proceeding  from  the  household  of  a  conservative, 
cautious,  slaveholding  merchant  in  Liverpool,  assigned  for  six  years  to  the 
rigid  and  barren  nursery  of  Eton,  drawing  from  her  dry  breast  whatever  of 
life  he  could,  and  placed  afterward  in  tutelage  under  a  scholastic  rapidly 
becoming  a  bishop  of  the  Church,  should  now  enter  Christ  Church  College 
to  be  finished  In  all  those  elements  of  character  and  purposes  of  life  which 


52  LIFE    AND     IIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

looked  to  the  one  supreme  end  of  maintaining  the  existing  order  and  making 
it  as  good  as  the  past.  It  might  be — as  it  was — the  place  above  all  others 
to  make  a  conservator,  an  apologist,  an  upholder  of  the  ancient  regime,  a 
defender  of  the  faith  and  of  all  the  abuses  and  despotisms  of  British  society 
as  it  was  in  1829  ;  but  it  was  least  of  all  the  place  to  make  a  reformer  and 
progressive  statesman. 

The  intermediary  period  in  young  Gladstone's  life,  reaching  from  1827 
to  1829 — ^that  is,  almost  to  the  completion  of  his  twentieth  year — is  a  little 
obscure  as  to  facts,  but  was  certainly  filled  with  close  application  and  pro- 
nounced advancement.  In  the  last-named  year  he  entered  Christ  Church 
College,  Oxford,  and  became  a  student  "  on  the  foundation  ;"  that  is,  at  the 
charge  of  the  university  endowment.  Few  young  men  have  within  our  cen- 
tury or  at  any  time  ever  taken  to  the  chosen  university  a  sincerer  purpose 
and  deeper  motive  than  prevailed  with  Gladstone.  Scarcely  had  he  en- 
tered the  university  when  he  became  distinguished  for  his  ability  and 
robust  character.  He  entered  freely  into  the  intellectual  and  moral  life  of 
the  college,  and  was  soon  regarded  as  a  leader. 

The  avenues  of  inquiry  opened  in  several  scholastic  directions  that  had 
hitherto  been  closed  to  Gladstone.  He  might  now  engage  in  metaphysical 
inquiry.  The  classical  languages  no  longer  absorbed  his  whole  time  and 
energies.  There  was  opportunity  for  general  reading,  for  rhetoric,  for  logic, 
for  criticism,  for  translation,  for  improvement  in  composition,  and  for  debate 
of  those  questions  which  were  then  paramount  in  England.  Up  to  this 
time,  however,  no  professorship  in  modern  languages  had  been  established 
at  Oxford — a  circumstance  attesting  in  a  striking  manner  the  predominance 
of  the  old  intellectual  life  of  mankind  over  the  new,  and  the  really  provincial 
character  of  the  Oxonian  learninor. 

Gladstone's  residence  at  the  university  covered  a  period  of  two  years 
— 1829-31.  Considering  his  age  and  opportunities,  we  may  allow  that  he 
expanded  at  this  period  more  rapidly  than  ever  before.  There  was  at  the 
institution  an  organization  known  as  the  Debating  Society,  or  Oxford 
Union.  Though  intended  in  the  first  place  for  students  about  to  become 
lawyers  or  clergymen,  it  was  nevertheless  open  to  all  who  would  avail  them- 
selves of  its  advantages.  The  young  politician  might  there,  as  well  as  any 
other,  try  his  powers.  The  Union  was  of  so  large  and  important  a  charac- 
ter as  to  be  second  onlv  to  the  collepfe  itself  in  the  advantages  which  it 
afforded.  In  this  respect  the  society  had  the  same  value  that  all  like  organ- 
izations have  had  in  connection  with  universities,  from  those  of  the  Middle 
Ages  in  Italy  down  to  the  frontier  institutions  of  America.  Within  the  last 
quarter  of  a  century,  the  changed  and  changing  manner  has  operated  to  un- 
dermine the  debating  unions  and  open  literary  societies  of  the  universities 
in  both  Europe  and  the   United  States,  a  fact  to  be  deeply  deplored  by  all 


ETON    AND    OXFORD.  53 

who  understand  the  merits  and  true  purpose  of  a  robust  and  aggressive  col- 
lege training.  It  is  higfh  time  for  all  lovers  of  universities  to  look  around 
and  discover  the  causes  of  deterioration  and  decay  wher.  the  debating 
society  gives  way,  as  it  has  virtually  done  in  America,  to  the  dilettantism 
and  dapper  insipidity  of  the  fraternity  hall  and  smoking  club, 

Gladstone  entered  fully  into  the  life  of  Oxford.  He  adopted  without 
hesitation' the  Toryism  and  orthodoxy  of  the  institution.  It  might  be  seen 
from  the  first  that  he  was  there  for  acquirement,  for  leadership,  for  honor. 
He  entered  into  the  Debating  Union,  penetrated  the  libraries,  made  the  ac- 
quaintance of  the  leading  young  men  of  the  United  Kingdom,  heard  their 
talk,  and  talked  and  wrote  himself.  His  urbanity  and  application  and  unim- 
peachable morals  made  him  a  young  man  of  mark.  He  was  a  Churchman, 
a  politician,  a  student,  all  in  one.  He  started  with  the  assumption  that  the 
middle  ground  is  the  true  place  of  vantage  and  virtue  in  all  things.  The 
Ovidian  maxim,  Tutissimus  in  medio  ibis,  was  adopted  by  him  without  ques- 
tion ;  and  the  force  of  it  to  some  extent  remained  with  him  through  life. 

The  time  when  Gladstone  was  a  student  resident  at  Oxford  was  an  era 
of  political  stormcloud  and  tempest  The  great  reform  movement  was  on. 
The  division  was  sharp  between  the  old  and  the  new.  The  profound  ques- 
tions of  reforming  Parliament,  of  abolishing  the  abuses  of  the  old  borough 
system,  and  of  ending  slavery  in  the  colonies  of  Great  Britain  were  on  In 
full  force.  While  at  Cambridge  the  reformatory  impulse  was  In  the  ascen- 
dant, at  Oxford  conservatism  was  predominant.  The  Whig  and  the  Tory, 
the  progressive  and  the  conservative,  the  defender  and  the  reformer,  clashed 
in  every  place.  Many  of  the  young  men  afterward  distinguished  in  the 
political  history  of  England  were  at  this  time  in  the  universities. 

The  phrase  goes  that  what  college  students  debate  will  presently  be 
the  issues  of  society.  In  the  Debating  Union  of  Oxford  were  gathered  the 
leading  spirits  from  three  or  four  of  the  colleges.  Baliol  was  there,  and  Oriel, 
and  Christ  Church.  The  meetings  were  held  once  a  week.  Generally  the 
subject  of  discussion  was  drawn  from  the  current  politics  and  the  conditions 
of  society.  Sometimes,  however,  the  subject  was  literary  and  critical.  On 
one  noted  occasion  a  debate  Avas  held  between  the  representatives  of  the 
Cambridge  Union  and  that  of  Oxford.  A  challenge  was  sent  over  to  the 
latter  university  by  the  former,  proposing  to  maintain  the  superior  merits 
of  Shelley  over  Lord  Byron. 

The  question  rose  high.  Shelley  had  been  expelled  from  Oxford  ;  and 
now  that  he  was  dead  in  a  foreign  land,  and  the  British  nation  could  no 
longer  work  itself  into  spasmodic  virtue  and  Indignation  over  the  personal 
life  of  the  poet,  his  merits  came  to  be  acknowledged,  and  his  name  a  literary 
shibboleth  at  Cambridge.  This  was  a  red  flag  to  Oxford.  The  debate  was 
held   at  the   latter  university  on  the   26th   of   November,  very   soon    after 


54  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

Gladstone's  admission.  One  of  the  representatives  from  Cambridge  was 
Richard  Monckton  Mihies  (afterwards  Lord  Houghton j),  who  was  exactly 
contemporary  with  Gladstone,  having  been  born  in  the  same  year  and  being 
of  even  dates  with  him  in  entering  and  returning  from  the  university. 
Houghton  in  an  address  delivered  at  Cambridge  tliirty-seven  years  after- 
ward says,  speaking  of  the  Shelley-Byron  debate  :  "  At  that  time  we  were 
all  full  of  Mr.  Shelley.  We  had  printed  his  Adonais  for  the  first  time  in 
England  ;  and  a  friend  of  ours  suggested  that  as  he  (Shelley)  had  been 
expelled  from  Oxford  and  been  very  badly  treated  at  that  university  it  would 
be  a  grand  thing  for  us  to  defend  him  there.  .  .  .  We  accordingly  went  to 
Oxford — at  that  time  a  long  dreary  post-chaise  journey  of  ten  hours — and 
were  hospitably  entertained  by  a  young  student  of  the  name  of  Gladstone  ; 
who,  by  the  by,  has  himself  been  since  expelled." 

It  is  a  significant  circumstance  that  on  this  occasion  Gladstone,  who  had 
only  been  at  Christ  Church  College  for  about  three  months,  represented  his 
college  in  the  reception  of  the  deputation  from  Cambridge.  His  colleague 
on  the  committee  was  Mr.  Manning  of  Oriel.  In  the  debate  that  ensued 
the  sentiment  and  arguments  were  quite  overwhelmingly  in  affirmation  of 
the  superiorit)-  of  Shelley  over  Byron.  The  leading  speakers  were  Francis 
Doyle,  Mr.  Manning  (afterward  the  cardinal),  Mr.  Sunderland,  Arthur 
Henry  Hallam,  and  Monckton  Milnes.  It  was  the  custom  on  such  occasions 
to  submit  the  question  to  a  vote.  This  was  done  ostensibly  on  the  merits 
of  the  argument ;  but  no  doubt  the  merits  of  the  question,  subjectively  con- 
sidered, were  held  in  mind  by  the  voters.  The  vote  in  this  case  was  for  the 
Cambridge  contestants  by  a  majority  of  ninety  to  thirty-three.  Gladstone 
himself  did  not  speak. 

His  rank  in  the  Debating  Union,  however,  was  at  once  acknowledged. 
Within  a  year  he  was  made  secretary  of  the  Society,  and  soon  afterward 
president.  These  distinctions  show  that  by  the  time  of  his  majority  (De- 
cember, 1830),  he  was  in  the  Oxonian  swim,  and  was  already  buffeting  the 
waves  and  tides  with  which  he  was  to  contend  durinor  the  rest  of  his  career. 
We  note  with  interest  the  political  questions  that  were  debated  at  this  time 
in  the  Union.  One  was,  ''Resolved,  that  the  disabilities  of  the  Jews  should 
be  removed."  Another  was,  ''Resolved,  that  the  administration  of  the  Duke 
of  Wellington  is  undeserving  of  the  confidence  of  the  country."  On  the 
latter  question  Gladstone,  then  secretary  of  the  Union,  spoke  with  great 
force  and  persuasiveness.  He  had  the  gratification  of  recording  an  affirma- 
tive decision,  though  the  vote  was  only  fifty-seven  against  fifty-six  in  the 
negative.  In  the  case  of  another  question  proposed  in  a  resolution  con- 
demnatory of  the  administration  of  Earl  Grey,  Gladstone  moved  out  boldly 
by  offering  a  substitute  in  which  we  may  discover  the  method  and  expres- 
sion which  characterized  many  of  his  policies. 


ETON    AND    OXFORD. 


55 


His  substitute  was:  "That  the  ministry  of  Earl  Grey  has  unwisely  in- 
troduced and  most  unscrupulously  forwarded  a  measure  which  threatens  not 
only  to  change  our  form  of  government,  but  ultimately  to  break  up  the  very 
foundation  of  social  order,  as  well  as  materially  to  forward  the  views  of 
those  who  are  pursuing  this  project  throughout  the  civilized  world."  In 
this  pronunciamento  we  note  not  only  the  merit,  but  the  vices  of  the  young 
political  leader,  a  part  of  whose  art  always  is  to  persuade  his  countrymen 
that  the  policy  of  the  opposing  party  is  about  to  break  up  the  foundations 
of  society  !  No  doubt  the  debater  on  such  an  occasion  half  believes  what 
he  says;  but  the  real  significance  of  it  is  the  construction  of  an  argumentuni 
i7i  terror  cm  for  political  effect.  It  appears  that  Gladstone  was  able  to  carr\- 
all  before  him  on  his  chosen  propositions,  for  the  vote  of  the  Union  was 
ninety-four  in  the  affirmative  to  thirty-six  in  the  negative. 

We  note  in  the  next  place  a  still  more  striking  example  of  the  Glad- 
stonian  character  at  this  time.  In  it  we  discover  too  the  vice  of  his  educa- 
tion, and  the  utterly  erroneous  course  in  which  he  was  started  at  the  begin- 
ning of  his  career.  The  next  question,  and  indeed  the  last,  of  which  we 
have  a  record  preserved  in  the  minutes  of  the  Oxford  Union  was  that  of  the 
proposed  abolition  of  slavery  in  the  West  Indies.  That  issue  was  then  com- 
ing rapidly  to  a  crisis  in  Great  Britain.  It  was  a  part,  indeed,  of  the  great 
reformatory  agitation  which  prevailed  at  the  close  of  the  third  decade.  The 
question  of  slavery  and  the  slave  trade  had  begun  to  be  agitated  as  far  back 
as  1786.  From  that  time  forth  Thomas  Clarkson  did  not  cease  to  declaim 
against  the  sale  and  servitude  of  human  beings.  He  was  joined  after  a  few 
years  by  William  Wilberforce  of  great  memory.  As  early  as  1790  both 
Pitt  and  Fox  joined  the  abolitionists. 

The  House  of  Commons  continued  to  be  aoitated  bv  the  efforts  of 
the  philanthropists  ;  but  the  House  of  Lords,  and  in  general  the  Tory 
party,  prevailed  to  stay  the  movement.  In  1823  the  society  for  the  mitiga- 
tion and  gradual  abolition  of  slavery  throughout  the  British  dominions  was 
organized,  and  the  movement  gained  an  impetus  by  the  advocacy  of  Thomas 
Fowell  Buxton  and  Elizabeth  Heyrick,  the  Quakeress,  who,  by  her  pam- 
phlet entitled  "  Immediate,  not  Gradual  Abolition,"  wrought  nearly  as 
forcefully  on  the  better  sentiments  of  the  English  people  as  Harriet  Beecher 
Stowe  was  destined  to  do  for  the  opinion  of  the  American  people  a  gener- 
ation later.  At  the  time  when  Gladstone  was  at  Christ  Church  the 
abolitionists  were  eatherine  up  all  their  enero^ies  for  the  final  and,  as  it 
proved  to  be,  the  successful  assault. 

John  Gladstone  was  a  slaveholder.  His  plantations  in  Demerara 
were  worked  by  slaves.  To  disturb  the  slave  system  was  to  disturb  him 
and  his  revenues.  Besides,  the  Tories  and  the  religious  establishment  of 
Great   Britain  united  politically  and  religiously  to  uphold  slavery.     Young 


56  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

Gladstone  was  a  Tory  and  a  High  Churchman,  At  this  period  in  his 
career  he  knew  two  things  :  one  was  the  ancient,  well-founded  political 
order  in  Great  Britain;  and  the  other  was  the  Church  of  England.  Of 
these  two  things  Oxford  was  the  Gibraltar.  Gladstone  was  one  of  the 
young  watchmen  sent  to  the  towers  on  the  wall  to  call  the  hours  and  defy 
the  enemy.  He  went  to  his  place  without  reluctance  and  with  full  convic- 
tion of  truth  and  duty.  The  situation,  however,  was  such  as  to  introduce  a 
contradiction  in  his  nature. 

We  may  imagine  that  the  slavery  debate  in  the  Oxonian  Union  was 
the  occasion  on  which  the  intellectual  and  moral  nature  of  William  E.  Glad- 
stone first  knew  pain,  for  then  he  first  sinned.  On  the  2d  of  June,  183I; 
when  his  career  at  Oxford  was  nearly  at  an  end,  a  resolution  was  proposed 
in  the  Union  for  the  immediate  abolition  of  slavery  in  the  West  Indies. 
Note  the  amendment  which  Gladstone  offered,  as  follows  :  "  That  legisla- 
tive enactments  ought  to  be  made,  and  if  necessary  to  be  enforced,  first,  for 
better  guarding  the  personal  and  civil  rights  of  the  Negroes  in  our  West 
Indian  colonies.  Second,  for  establishing  compulsory  manumission.  Third, 
for  securing  universally  the  receiving  of  a  Christian  education  under  the 
clergy  and  teachers  independent  of  the  planters  ;  a  measure  of  which  total 
but  gradual  emancipation  will  be  the  natural  consequence,  as  it  was  of  a 
similar  procedure  in  the  first  ages  of  Christianity." 

Here,  then,  we  perceive  the  parting  of  the  ways.  The  light  in  the 
young  man  began  to  shine,  but  yet  shone  only  in  the  darkness.  It  is  a 
remarkable  circumstance  that  every  beginning  made  by  William  E.  Glad- 
stone in  the  days  of  his  youth,  with  the  solitary  exception  of  the  beginning 
of  a  sound  moral  character,  was  made  either  diametrically  in  the  opposite 
direction  to  human  rights  and  progress,  or  was  at  most  projected  at  illogical 
and  impossible  angles  from  the  beaten  high  road  of  error  which  he  was  trav- 
eling. His  amendments  to  the  motion  for  the  abolition  of  slavery  show 
the  Tory  politician.  We  perceive  that  in  viewing  slavery  he  was  desirous 
of  making  that  institution  as  tolerable  as  possible  ;  but  he  was  willing  that 
the  institution  itself  should  be  perpetuated.  He  had  just  passed  his 
majorit)'.  The  shadow  of  Oxford  was  strong  upon  him.  The  influence  of 
his  father's  opinions  and  interests  also  prevailed.  The  Tory  leaders  said 
slavery.  The  bishops  said  slavery.  The  Bible  said  slavery.  The  past 
said  slavery.  All  these  are  good  ;  therefore,  slavery  shall  be  maintained. 
True,  philanthropy  seems  to  be  against  it.  True,  the  light  within  us  seems 
to  reveal  a  hideous  countenance  on  the  front  of  this  ancient  institution 
and  to  make  it  indeed  a  criminal  monster.  But  the  inner  light  may  be  an 
ignis  fa tuus.  The  rising  philanthropy,  shining  afar,  may  be  only  a  bale- 
fire kindled  above  the  rocks.  Therefore  we  will  conserve  things  as  they 
are.     But  we  will  modify  and  temporize  a  little  in  the  direction  of  progress 


ETON    AND    OXFORD.  57 

We  repeat  that  this  struggle  of  irreconcilable  forces  in  the  Gladstonian 
intellect  and  purpose  casts  a  wide  effulgence  over  his  whole  career,  in  the 
light  of  which  the  man  may  be  best  interpreted.  We  may  note  that,  some 
years  afterward,  when  Gladstone  had  entered  Parliament,  and  when  slavery 
had  been  abolished  throughout  the  British  empire,  except  in  India,  he  was 
constrained  by  an  uncharitable  reference  of  a  Liberal  speaker  to  defend  as 
best  he  might  the  character  and  transactions  of  his  father  as  a  West-Indian 
slaveholder. 

Thus,  with  rapid  development  and  rise  to  such  reputation  as  a  3'outh 
may  gain  at  his  university,  Gladstone  passed  his  two  years  at  Oxford.  He 
came  to  his  examinations  in  the  latter  part  of  1831  and  gained  the  highest 
possible  honors  of  the  university.  He  was  graduated  with  the  distinction 
known  as  "  Double  First;"  that  is,  he  received  the  first  honors  under  two 
specifications,  which  was  the  highest  rank  that  a  student  might  attain. 

In  after  years,  with  the  growth  of  his  reflective  powers,  Gladstone 
turned  frequently  to  contemplate  Oxford,  and  in  many  instances  gave 
critical  estimates  of  the  university  where  the  formal  education  of  his  youth 
was  completed.  He  came  to  see  how  far  from  the  true  beginning  of  a 
liberal  and  progressive  statesman's  life  that  ancient  institution  stood. 
Forty-seven  years  after  his  graduation  he  made  an  address  to  the  Palmer- 
ston  Club  at  Oxford,  in  the  course  of  wdiich  he  traversed  the  principles  of 
the  university  and  criticised  her  errors.  "  I  trace,"  said  he,"  in  the  education 
of  Oxford  of  my  own  time  one  great  defect.  Perhaps  it  was  my  own  fault, 
but  I  must  admit  that  I  did  not  learn  when  at  Oxford  that  which  I  have 
learned  since,  namely,  to  set  a  due  value  on  the  imperishable  and  the  ines- 
timable principles  of  human  liberty.  The  temper  which  I  think  too  much 
prevailed  In  academic  circles  was  that  liberty  w:  ■•■  regarded  with  jealousy, 
and  that  fear  could  not  be  wholly  dispensed  with.  ...  I  think  that  the 
principle  of  the  Conservative  party  is  jealousy  of  liberty  and  of  the  people 
only  qualified  by  fear  ;  but  I  think  the  policy  of  the  Liberal  party  Is  trust 
in  the  people  only  qualified  by  prudence.  I  can  only  assure  you,  gentlemen, 
that,  now  I  am  in  front  of  extended  popular  privileges,  I  have  no  fear  of 
those  enlargements  of  the  constitution  that  seem  to  be  approaching.  On 
the  contrary,  I  hail  them  with  desire.  I  am  not  in  the  least  degree  conscious 
that  I  have  less  reverence  for  antiquity,  for  the  beautiful  and  good  and 
glorious  charges  that  our  ancestors  have  handed  down  to  us  as  a  patrimony 
to  our  race,  than  I  had  In  other  days  when  I  held  other  political  opinions. 
I  have  learnt  to  set  the  true  value  upon  human  liberty,  and  in  whatever  I 
have  changed  there,  and  there  only,  has  been  the  explanation  of  the 
change." 

Out  of  this  paragraph  we  may  discover  the  bottom  principle  in  the 
light  of  which  the  political  career  of  William  E.  Gladstone  is  to  be  explained. 


58  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

Travel  and  Entrance  into  Parliament. 

LADSTONE  never  lacked  for  means  or  opportunity.  Nor  did 
he  ever  squander  the  one  or  lose  the  other.  His  IKg  was  pre- 
eminently a  life  of  seeking  and  of  labor.  If  great  influence  and 
o-reat  fame  came  to  him,  they  came  as  the  results  of  honest 
application,  rational  purpose,  and  a  well-tempered  ambition. 
Havino;  completed  his  course  at  Oxford  and  attained  his  majority,  he  next 
availed  himself  of  the  opportunity  to  travel  on  the  Continent.  Hitherto  his 
views  of  life  and  manners  had  been  limited  to  England.  His  first  tour  abroad 
beo-an  with  the  year  1832,  and  covered  a  period  of  six  months.  Most  of 
this  time  he  spent  in  the  Italian  cities,  principally  in  Rome,  the  Mecca  of 
young  scholars. 

It  appears  that  Mr.  Gladstone  merely  traveled  and  observed  during  his 
first  tour  on  the  Continent,  and  that  he  wrote  but  little  in  that  time.  Six 
years  afterward,  however,  he  went  a  second  time  to  Italy,  and  thence  to 
Sicily.  On  this  journey  he  kept  a  diary,  and  wrote  copiously  of  what  he 
saw  and  thought.  In  the  interval  between  his  first  and  second  journey  he 
had  entered  public  life,  and  his  name  was  already  known  in  the  parliameri- 
tary  history  of  the  epoch.  There  is  a  great  difference  in  the  intellectual 
power  and  development  of  a  young  man  at  the  ages  of  twenty-one  and 
twenty-nine.  At  the  former  age  he  may  still  be  to  a  certain  extent  a  boy 
in  energy  and  purpose  ;  but  if  the  manly  power  have  not  come  upon  him  at 
twenty-nine  then  will  it  not  come  at  all. 

The  biographers  of  Mr.  Gladstone  have  dwelt  with  interest  upon  the 
account  which  he  gives  of  his  visit  to  Sicily  in  the  year  1838,  and  in  partic- 
ular upon  his  description  of  ^tna  and  the  eruption  which  fortunately  for 
him  occurred  coincidently  with  his  visit.  yEtna  and  Vesuvius  are  not  in  the 
habit  of  displaying  their  powers  for  the  special  delight  of  travelers  with  a 
descriptive  turn.  Bayard  Taylor,  on  one  of  his  returns  from  the  East,  was 
delayed  ten  days,  as  If  to  make  his  arrival  at  Naples  (he  dwells  half-humor- 
ously  upon  the  Incident)  coincident  with  a  Vesuvian  vomit.  It  appears 
that  Gladstone  was  almost  equally  favored  on  the  occasion  of  his  ascent  of 
yEtna.  On  his  way  to  the  fire  mountain,  he  visited  the  Sicilian  temples 
and  ruins.  His  journal  shows  the  character  of  his  sentiments  amid  these 
scenes,  and  Illustrates  his  descriptive  method: 

"After  ^tna,"  says  he,  "the  temples  are  certainly  the  great  charm  and 
attraction  of  Sicily.  I  do  not  know  whether  there  is  any  one  among  them 
which,  taken  alone,  exceeds  in  interest  and  beauty  that  of  Neptune  at 
Paestum;  but  they  have  the  advantage  of  number  and  variety  as  well  as  of 


TRAVEL    AND    ENTRANCE    INTO    PARLIAMENT. 


59 


VIEW    OF   iETNA. 


6o  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE, 

highly  interesting  position.  At  Segeste  the  temple  is  enthroned  in  a  per- 
fect mountain  solitude,  and  it  is  like  a  beautiful  tomb  of  its  relicrion,  so 
stately,  so  entire ;  while  around,  but  for  one  solitary  house,  of  the  keeper, 
there  is  nothing,  absolutely  nothing,  to  disturb  the  apparent  reign  of  silence 
and  death.  At  Selinus  the  huge  fragments  on  the  plain  seem  to  make  an 
eminence  themselves;  and  they  listen  to  the  ever-young  and  unwearied  waves 
which  almost  wash  their  base  and  mock  their  desolation  by  the  image  of 
perpetual  life  and  motion  they  present,  while  the  tone  of  their  heavy  fall 
upon  the  beach  well  accords  with  the  solemnity  of  the  scene.  At  Girgenti 
the  ridge  visible  to  the  mariner  from  afar  is  still  crowned  by  a  long  line  of 
fabrics,  presenting  to  the  eye  a  considerable  mass  and  regularity  of  struc- 
ture, and  the  town  is  near  and  visible ;  yet  that  town  is  so  entirely  the  mere 
phantom  of  its  former  glory  within  its  now  shrunken  limits,  that  instead  of 
disturbing  the  effect,  it  rather  seems  to  add  a  new  image  and  enhance  it. 
The  temples  enshrine  a  most  pure  and  salutar}'  art,  that  which  connects 
grandeur  of  effect  with  simplicity  of  detail ;  and  retaining  their  beauty  and 
their  dignity  in  their  decay  they  represent  the  great  man  when  fallen,  as  types 
of  that  almost  highest  of  human  qualities — silent,  yet  not  sullen,  endurance." 

This  style,  though  rather  magniloquent  and  a  little  indistinct  and 
drawling,  is  superior  to  most  of  the  descriptive  writing  which  English  liter- 
ature displayed  sixty  years  ago.  We  miss  the  clear-cut,  brilliant,  and  poeti- 
cal imagery  which  the  taste  of  the  present  day  demands.  The  m.ost  signifi- 
cant paragraph  or  expression  in  the  extract  is  the  last,  in  which  the  silent, 
unresentful,  and  sublime  ruin  of  Girgenti  is  compared  to  a  great  man,  sa)\ 
a  defeated  prime  minister  (such  as  we  shall  be  fifty  years  from  now !)  fallen 
from  power,  but  magnificent  in  overthrow.  The  Gladstonian  mind  was  man- 
ifestly, even  at  that  early  day,  full  of  such  imagery  and  thought  as  that.  It 
is  as  true  as  ever  that  "coming  events  cast  their  shadows  before." 

Mr.  Gladstone's  journal  shcrws  the  stages  of  his  ascent  to  the  crater  of 
the  volcano.  He  gives  us  an  account  of  the  immense  chestnut  trees,  per- 
haps the  finest  in  the  world,  which  mark  the  limit  of  tree  growth  on  the 
side  of  the  mountain.  The  traveler  observes  with  care  the  aspects  of  nature, 
not  failing  to  note  the  character  of  the  soil  and  the  relative  fertility  at  dif- 
ferent points.  The  account  is  an  odd  mixture  of  inchoate  poetry  and  polit- 
ical economy.  It  was  on  the  the  30th  of  October,  1838,  that  the  writer  set 
out  from  Catania  to  the  summit  of  y^tna.  On  reaching  Nicolosi  the  moun- 
tain began  to  rumble.  There  were  patches  of  woods  and  some  mountain 
pastures  in  which  fiocks  were  browsing.  The  tropical  temperature  gave 
place,  first  to  temperate  and  then  to  frigid  conditions.  The  night  Avas 
passed  by  the  company  at  Casa  degli  Inglesi,  and  on  the  following  morning 
the  travelers  beheld  a  sublime  sunrise.  Gladstone  was  greatly  impressed 
with  the  scene,  and  erives  the  following  account  of  what  he  witnessed  : 


J 


TFAVEL    AND    ENTRANCE    INTO    PARLIAMENT.  6l 

"Just  before  we  reached  the  Up  of  the  crater  the  guide  exultingly 
pointed  out  what  he  declared  to  be  ordinarily  the  greatest  sight  of  the  moun- 
tain, namely,  the  shadow  of  the  cone  of  ^tna  drawn  with  the  utmost  deli- 
cacy by  the  newly  risen  sun,  but  of  gigantic  extent ;  its  point  at  this  mo- 
ment rested  on  the  mountains  of  Palermo,  probably  a  hundred  miles  off, 
and  the  entire  figure  was  visible,  the  atmosphere^  over  the  mountains  having 
become  and  continuing  perfectly  and  beautifully  transparent,  although  in 
the  hundreds  of  valleys  which  were  beneath  us,  from  the  east  to  the  west  of 
Sicily,  and  from  the  mountains  of  Messina  down  to  Cape  Passaro,  there  were 
still  abundant  vapors  waiting  for  a  higher  sun  to  disperse  them  ;  but  we 
enjoyed  in  its  perfection  this  view  of  the  earliest  and  finest  work  of  the 
greater  light  of  heaven  in  the  passage  of  his  beams  over  this  portion  of  the 
earth's  surface. 

"  During  the  hour  we  spent  on  the  summit,  the  vision  of  the  shadow 
was  speedily  contracted,  and  taught  us  how  rapid  is  the  real  rise  of  the  sun 
in  the  heavens,  although  its  effect  is  diminished  to  the  eye  by  a  kind  of  fore- 
shortening." 

The  travelers  next  come  to  the  edge  of  the  crater.  Within  there  was 
a  state  of  active  eruption.  Certainly  the  scene  was  enough  to  kindle  the 
enthusiasm  of  the  most  phlegmatic  spirit.  It  illustrates  the  whole  culture 
of  that  age  and  the  temperament  of  Mr.  Gladstone  in  particular,  that  this 
sublime  exhibition  of  the  natural  world,  this  heaving  bituminous  lake  of  fire 
and  terror  swelling  as  if  to  vent  itself  upon  the  beauty  and  life  of  the  world, 
suggested  Vergil  and  what  he  had  said  and  thought  in  visiting  and  describ- 
ing the  same  scene.  Gladstone,  yielding  to  the  past,  catches  up  the  imagery 
of  the  Aineid,  and  repeats  that,  and  weighs  it  and  criticizes  it  as  the 
expression  of  his  own  emotions  in  the  presence  of  the  smoking  and  roaring 
^tna!  The  influence  of  the  scholastic  spirit  could  go  no  further.  The 
Gladstonian  intellect  and  imagination,  strong  as  they  were,  and  excited  as 
they  were  by  one  of  the  sublimest  spectacles  to  be  witnessed  on  the  earth, 
turns  to  the  fictions  of  a  Roman  poet,  distant  from  his  own  point  of  obser- 
vation by  more  than  eighteen  hundred  years,  and  criticizes  and  analyzes 
his  expressions  as  to  their  adequacy  and  correctness  considered  as  linguis- 
tic pictures  of  a  volcanic  mountain  in  the  act  of  disgorging  itself  on  the 
world.  That  method  was  the  natural  result  of  six  years  of  Latin  and  Greek 
readings  at  Eton,  followed  by  the  apotheosis  of  the  past  at  Oxford  !  The 
vision  of  the  future  Premier  of  England,  stretching  over  the  hell-throat  of 
vE^tna,  was  obfuscated  with  his  Latin  hexameters. 

It  could  not  be  said  that  Gladstone  was  ever  a  great  traveler.  His 
absences  on  the  Continent  were  never  frequent,  and  were  in  the  beaten 
way.  His  thoughts  were  too  much  occupied  with  the  organic  movements 
of   society  and   the    conditions   and   tendencies   of   political    parties    to   be 


62  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

greatly  absorbed  with  the  aspects  of  the  natural  world  or  deeply  concerned 
with  the  manners  and  customs  of  foreign  races.  He  must  return  as  soon 
as  practicable  to  England,  in  order  to  participate  in  the  great  action  of 
the  ao-e. 

It  was  in  the  year  1832  that  Gladstone  first  stood  for  Parliament. 
He  appeared  in  public  life  as  a  Tory,  under  the  patronage  of  the  Duke  of 
New^castle.  It  was  the  custom  of  the  times  for  political  leaders  to  select 
promising  young  men  wdiose  views  were  accordant  with  their  own,  and 
to  promote  their  election  to  the  House  of  Commons.  In  such  cases  a 
borouo-h  would  be  selected  whose  voters  were  known  to  be  favorable  to 
that  party  to  which  the  young  man  belonged,  and  he  would  be  sent  there 
to  contest  the  election  with  some  rival  or  rivals  of  opposing  politics. 

The  epoch  at  which  William  E.  Gladstone  first  appeared  before  the 
public  was  so  extraordinary  as  to  demand  some  special  consideration.  It 
was  the  very  crisis  at  which  the  great  Reform  Bill  was  forced  through 
Parliament  against  the  opposition  of  the  ministry,  the  king,  and  the  landed 
aristocracy  of  England. 

Let  us  note  a  few  of  the  political  conditions  which  were  present  in  the 
United  Kingdom  as  late  as  the  year  1830.  That  was  the  year  of  the  revo- 
lutionary movement  on  the  Continent,  in  which  the  roused-up  people  of 
France  discharged  Charles  X  from  further  service,  and  took  the  citizen 
king  instead.  In  that  year  Belgium  became  independent,  and  soon  after- 
ward gave  the  crown  to  Leopold  I.  In  England  there  was  less  audacity. 
As  to  royal  conditions,  George  IV  died,  and  William  IV  came  to  the 
throne.  The  agitation  in  England,  coincident  with  that  on  the  Continent, 
took  the  form  of  a  movement  for  the  reorganization  of  the  House  of  Com- 
mons on  a  reformed  basis. 

Than  this  project  nothing  could  be  more  reasonable,  and  certainly 
nothing  was  ever  more  bitterly  opposed.  The  House  of  Commons  rested 
upon  a  foundation  thoroughly  corrupt  and  absurd ;  but  conservatism 
upheld  the  existing  system.  The  population  of  England  had  now  fluctu- 
ated from  the  land  side  to  the  great  manufacturing  cities.  Populous  com- 
munities had  sprung  up  where  none  had  existed  before.  Industry  had  under- 
gone ofreat  changes.  The  House  of  Commons  no  lonofer  represented  the 
actual  England,  but  the  old  England  of  a  mythical  past.  Tremendous 
cities  now  flourished,  and  because  they  were  of  recent  growth  were  unrep- 
resented in  Parliament.  Such  were  Liverpool  and  Manchester  and  Leeds, 
whose  teeming  thousands  of  people  had  no  voice  in  the  House  of  Com- 
mons. But  the  ancient  boroughs,  however  depopulated,  kept  their  rights 
of  representation.  Nothing  could  be  more  preposterous  than  the  system 
which  had  supervened.  Conservative  England  continued  to  declare  that 
her  ancient  boroughs,  such  as  Gratton  and  Old  Sarum.  tJioiiQ-h  Jmviii^  not 


TRAVEL    AND    ENTRANCE    INTO    PARLIAMENT. 


63 


WILLIAM    IV. 


64  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

a  single  house,  must  be  represented  by  two  members  in  the  Commons , 
for  It  had  once  been  so,  and  nothing  must  be  changed ! 

The  condition  became  so  monstrous  that  intelHgent  manufacturers 
and  citizens  and  Whig  statesmen  began  to  agitate  for  a  retorm.  The 
result  was  a  pohtical  revolt.  The  ministry  of  the  Duke  of  Wellington  was 
overthrown,  and  a  new  ministry  was  formed  under  Earl  Grey  in  Novem- 
ber of  1830.  This  revolution  preceded  the  Reform  Bill,  so-called,  which 
v.^as  not  presented  until  the  ist  of  March,  1831.  The  agitation  shook  Great 
Britain  to  the  center.  The  last  months  of  1830-31  witnessed  a  crisis  more 
serious  than  anything  which  had  been  known  since  the  revolution  of  1688. 
There  were  commotions  in  the  cabinet — intricrues  and  counter-intrigues, 
and  constant  battle  between  the  House  of  Lords  and  the  rising  sentiment 
of  the  country.  Not  until  the  7th  of  June,  1832,  was  the  Reform  Bill 
finally  passed,  and  then  only  when  the  movement  was  backed  by  imminent 
revolution. 

Two  other  liberal  tendencies  appeared  at  the  same  time.  One  was  the 
project  for  the  abolition  of  slavery  throughout  the  British  dominions,  and 
the  other  for  the  removal  of  the  remaining  disabilities  of  the  Jews.  British 
conservatism.  Incorporated  In  the  Tory  party,  was  firmly  arrayed  against  all 
these  tendencies  of  progress.  The  radicals  came  on  valiantly  to  the  battle. 
The  Whig  party  as  such  was  generally  with  the  progressive  tide.  There 
was  at  this  period,  as  at  all  times.  In  England  a  great  number  of  leaders 
and  a  large  following  who  sought  to  stand  on  middle  ground  between  the 
contending  elements — to  prevent  by  their  Influence  the  effects  of  a  Tory 
reaction  and  to  constitute  a  brake  on  the  too  rapidly  running  wheels  of 
reform.  It  was  the  Influence  of  this  class  that  led  to  the  surprising  results 
of  the  English  elections  of  1832. 

A  new  reform  Parliament  had  now  to  be  chosen  In  accordance  with 
the  bill  which  had  just  been  passed.  The  passage  of  the  measure  seemed 
to  Imply  that  Tory  England  had  gone  to  the  wall.  It  was  confidently 
expected  that  the  new  House  of  Commons  would  be  overwhelmingly 
liberal.  So  thought  the  radicals,  and  the  discomfited  Tories  were  ready 
to  concede  such  a  result.  But  both  parties  were  disappointed  in  the  elec- 
tions. Those  who  had  supported  the  Reform  Bill  were  not  universally  and 
overwhelmingly  elected.  Many  of  the  leading  conservatives  were  return-^d 
to  Parliament  under  the  approval  of  distinct  majorities. 

It  was  In  this  election  that  William  E.  Gladstone  first  offered  himself 
as  a  candidate  for  the  House.  He  stood  for  Newark,  In  which  the  Duke 
of  Newcastle  correctly  divined  a  chance  of  success  against  the  reform,  party. 
It  was  to  enter  into  the  canvass  of  this  borough  that  Mr.  Gladstone,  cutting 
short  his  first  visit  to  the  Continent,  returned  to  England  In  September  of 
1832.     The  Earl  of  Lincoln,  son  of  the  Duke  of  Newcastle,  was  an  Intimate 


TRAVEL    AND    ENTRANCE    INTO    PARLIAMENT.  65 

friend  of  the  young  aspirant,  and  it  was  this  personal  influence  perhaps  that 
led  the  duke  to  advance  and  support  Gladstone  in  the  Newark  contest. 

The  political  usage  in  England  varies  so  much  from  that  with  which 
we  are  familiar  in  our  own  country  that  American  readers  have  difficulty 
in  understanding  the  English  elections.  It  is  not  necessary  that  the  Eng- 
lish candidate  for  the  House  of  Commons  shall  stand  for  election  for  the 
borough  in  which  he  resides.  He  may  choose  his  field.  He  is  not  "nomi- 
nated" in  the  American  manner.  There  is  a  large  freedom  on  the  part  of  the 
candidate  in  declaring  himself  As  many  as  compete  for  the  honor  of  elec- 
tion go  before  the  people  of  the  borough  with  public  address  and  printed 
circulars  containing  an  expression  of  the  alleged  principles  of  the  candi- 
dates ;  and  when  all  is  done  an  election  is  held,  at  which  the  voters  declare 
their  choice  by  show  of  hands  or  by  ballot  in  the  American  manner. 

In  the  Newark  canvass  of  1832,  which  was  the  first  held  after  the  en- 
larofement  of  the  suffrage  under  the  Reform  Bill,  the  other  candidates  were 
Mr.  W.  F.  Handley  and  Mr.  Serjeant  Wilde.  The  three  represented  the 
different  opinions  of  the  day.  The  advanced  liberal  candidate  was  Ser- 
jeant Wilde,  who  had  been  already  three  times  a  candidate — and  once 
successfully — for  parliamentary  honors.  He  had  canvassed  the  borough  In 
1829,  1830,  and  1 83 1,  as  the  representative  of  the  reform  party,  and  in  the 
last-named  year  had  been  elected.  There  was  every  presumption  that  after 
the  passage  of  the  Reform  Bill,  when  the  benefits  of  the  measure  might  be 
expected  to  accrue  to  those  who  had  favored  it,  the  liberal  candidate  would 
receive  an  increased  majority. 

It  would  seem,  however,  that  Serjeant  Wilde  was  not  able  to  contend 
successfully  with  the  stranger  Gladstone.  The  young  man's  personal  ap- 
pearance was  greatly  in  his  favor.  He  was  well-grown  and  manly.  Cur- 
rent descriptions  represent  him  as  possessing  a  handsome  person  and  an  in- 
tellectual and  striking  countenance.  Pictures  preserved  of  the  future  states- 
man from  this  time  represent  him  as  full-visaged,  with  large  lustrous  eyes, 
long  heavy  brows,  and  a  peculiarly  adult  and  forceful  expression  for  a  young 
man  only  twenty-two  years  of  age.  He  came  to  Newark  also  with  unusual 
oratorical  powers.  He  had  carefully  prepared  himself  for  the  emergency 
which  had  now  arrived.  W^ilde,  his  principal  opponent,  had  experience  and 
abilities.  He  was  skilled  in  the  arts  of  the  platform,  and  had  the  enthusi- 
astic support  of  the  so-called  Blue  Club,  or  Liberal  League  of  the  borough. 
He  was  also  thought  to  be  the  winning  candidate.  He  had  the  prestige  of 
being  already  a  member  of  the  House,  presenting  himself  for  reelection,  un- 
der the  very  claim  which  had  been  approved  by  the  voters  in  1830. 

Gladstone,  however,  showed  himself  superior  in  public  argument — a 
thing  never  lost  on  an  English  constituency.  He  also  developed  political 
skill,  and  was  supported  by  the  Red  Club  of  Newark  with  as  much  enthusi- 
5 


66  LIFE    AM)    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    (iLADSTONE. 

asm  as  was  Wilde  l)y  the  Blues.  Gladstone  was  an  out-and-out  Tory  in  his 
principles;  but  he  made  his  argument  with  a  certain  reserve  which  always 
characterized  his  policy  and  contributed  much  to  his  success.  The  British 
mind  demands  that  the  wheels  of  progress  shall  indeed  revolve,  but  it  also 
demands  that  they  shall  turn  slowly,  moderately,  safely,  sometimes  imper- 
ceptibly. Gladstone  seems  from  the  first  to  have  understood  the  nature  of 
that  constituency  upon  which  he  must  rely  for  support. 

On  the  9th  of  October,  1832,  the  young  candidate  sent  to  the  electors 
of  Newark  his  first  formal  political  address.  The  reader  will  be  interested 
to  see  in  what  manner  the  neophyte  politician  aspiring  to  great  things  de- 
livered his  cause  to  his  intending  constituents.  It  will  be  noted  that  the 
author  of  the  paper  recognized  slavery  as  the  leading  question  at  issue.  It 
cannot  fail  of  interest  to  mark  in  what  manner  the  young  Tory  sought  to 
support  and  defend  for  a  while  longer  that  ancient  barbarity  of  mankind, 
the  system  of  human  bondage  : 

"  Having  now  completed  my  canvass,"  says  he,  "  I  think  it  my  duty  as 
well  to  remind  you  of  the  principles  on  which  I  have  solicited  your  votes, 
as  freely  to  assure  my  friends  that  its  result  has  placed  my  success  beyond 
a  doubt. 

"  I  have  not  requested  your  favor  on  the  ground  of  adherence  to  the 
opinions  of  any  man  or  party,  further  than  such  adherence  can  be  fairly  un- 
derstood from  the  conviction  I  have  not  hesitated  to  avow,  that  we  must 
watch  and  resist  that  uninquiring  and  indiscriminating  desira  for  change 
amongst  us,  which  threatens  to  produce,  along  with  partial  good,  a  melan- 
choly preponderance  of  mischief;  which,  I  am  persuaded,  would  aggravate 
beyond  computation  the  deep-seated  evils  of  our  social  state,  and  the  heavy 
burdens  of  our  industrial  classes  ;  which,  by  disturbing  our  peace,  destroys 
confidence,  and  strikes  at  the  root  of  prosperity.  Thus  It  has  done  already; 
and  thus,  we  must  therefore  believe,  it  will  do. 

"  For  the  mitigation  of  those  evils,  M-e  must,  I  think,  look  not  only  to 
particular  measures,  but  to  the  restoration  of  sounder  general  principles.  I 
mean  especially  that  principle  on  which  alone  the  Incorporation  of  religion 
with  the  State  In  our  Constitution  can  be  defended  ;  that  the  duties  of  gov- 
ernors are  strictly  and  peculiarly  religious  ;  and  that  legislatures,  like  Indi- 
viduals, are  bound  to  carry  throughout  their  acts  the  spirit  of  the  high 
truths  they  have  acknowledged.  Principles  are  now  arrayed  against  our  in- 
stitutions ;  and  not  by  truckling  nor  temporizing — not  by  oppression  nor 
by  corruption — but  by  principles  they  must  be  met. 

"  Among  their  first  results  should  be  a  sedulous  and  special  attention  to 
the  interests  of  the  poor,  founded  upon  the  rule  that  those  who  are  the  least 
able  to  take  care  of  themselves  should  be  most  regarded  by  others.  Par- 
ticularly it  is  a  duty  to  endeavor,  by  every  means,  that  /ahoi^  may  receive 


TRAVEL    AND    ENTRANCE    INTO    PARLIAMENT.  67 

adeqicate  remuneration  ;  which,  unhappily,  among  several  classes  of  our 
fellow-countrymen  is  not  now  the  case.  Whatever  measures,  therefore — 
whether  by  correction  of  the  poor  laws,  allotment  of  cottage  grounds,  or 
otherwise — tend  to  promote  this  object,  I  deem  entitled  to  the  warmest  sup- 
port ;  with  all  such  as  are  calculated  to  secure  sound  moral  conduct  in  any 
class  of  society. 

"  I  proceed  to  the  momentous  question  of  slavery,  which  I  have  found 
entertained  among  you  in  that  candid  and  temperate  spirit  which  alone 
befits  its  nature,  or  promises  to  remove  its  difficulties.  If  I  have  not  recog- 
nized the  right  of  an  irresponsible  society  to  interpose  between  me  and  the 
electors,  it  has  not  been  from  any  disrespect  to  its  members,  nor  from 
unwillingness  to  answer  theirs  or  any  other  questions  on  which  the  electors 
may  desire  to  know  my  views.  To  the  esteemed  secretary  of  the  society  I 
submitted  my  reasons  for  silence  ;  and  I  made  a  point  of  stating  these  views 
to  him,  in  his  character  of  a  voter. 

"  As  regards  the  abstract  lawfulness  of  slavery,  I  acknowledge  it  simply 
as  importing  the  right  of  one  man  to  the  labor  of  another  ;  and  I  rest  it 
upon  the  fact  that  Scripture,  the  paramount  authority  upon  such  a  point, 
gives  directions  to  persons  standing  in  the  relation  of  master  to  slave,  for 
their  conduct  in  that  relation  ;  whereas,  were  the  matter  absolutely  and 
necessarily  sinful,  it  w^ould  not  regulate  the  manner.  Assuming  sin  as  the 
cause  of  degradation,  It  strives  most  effectually  to  cure  the  latter  by  extir- 
pating the  former.  We  are  agreed  that  both  the  physical  and  the  moral 
bondage  of  the  slave  are  to  be  abolished.  The  question  is  as  to  the  order, 
and  the  order  only ;  now  Scripture  attacks  the  moral  evil  before  the  tem- 
poral one,  and  the  temporal  through  the  moral  one,  and  I  am  content  with 
the  order  w^hich  Scripture  has  established. 

"  To  this  end  I  desire  to  see  immediately  set  on  foot,  by  Impartial  and 
sovereign  authority,  a  universal  and  efficient  system  of  Christian  instruc- 
tion, not  intended  to  resist  designs  of  individual  piety  and  wisdom  for  the 
religious  improvement  of  the  Negroes,  but  to  do  thoroughly  what  they  can 
only  do  partially. 

"As  regards  immediate  emancipation,  whether  with  or  w-Ithout  com- 
pensation, there  are  several  minor  reasons  against  it ;  but  that  which  weighs 
with  me  is,  that  it  would,  I  much  fear,  exchange  the  evils  now  affecting  the 
Negro  for  others  w^hich  are  weightier — for  a  relapse  into  deeper  debase- 
ment, if  not  for  bloodshed  and  internal  war.  Let  fitness  be  made  a  condi- 
tion for  emancipation  ;  and  let  us  strive  to  bring  him  to  that  fitness  by  the 
shortest  possible  course.  Let  him  enjoy  the  means  of  earning  his  freedom 
through  honest  and  industrious  habits  ;  thus  the  same  instruments  which 
attain  his  liberty  shall  likewise  render  him  competent  to  use  it;  and  thus,  I 
earnestly  trust,  without  risk  of  blood  without  violation  of  property,    with 


68  LIFE    AM)    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

unimpaired  benefit  to  the  Negro,  and  with  the  utmost  speed  which  prudence 
will  admit,  we  shall  arrive  at  that  exceedingly  desirable  consummation,  the 
utter  extinction  of  slavery. 

"And  now,  gentlemen,  as  regards  the  enthusiasm  with  which  you  have 
rallied  round  your  ancient  flag,  and  welcomed  the  humble  representative  of 
those  principles  whose  emblem  it  is,  1  trust  that  neither  the  lapse  of  time 
nor  the  seductions  of  prosperity  can  ever  efface  it  from  my  memory.  To 
my  opponents  my  acknowledgments  are  due  for  the  good  humor  and  kind- 
ness with  which  they  have  received  me ;  and  while  I  thank  my  friends  for 
their  zealous  and  unwearied  exertions  in  my  favor,  I  briefly  but  emphatic- 
ally assure  them,  that  if  promises  be  an  adequate  foundation  of  confidence, 
or  experience  a  reasonable  ground  of  calculation,  our  victory  2s  sure. 
"  I  have  the  honor  to  be,  gentlemen, 

"Your  obliged  and  obedient  servant, 

"  \V.  E.  Gladstone." 

No  one  in  America  shall  unduly  wonder  at  this  speech,  delivered  in  the 
fall  of  1832.  No  age  shall  judge  the  preceding  but  by  the  standards  that 
then  prevailed.  Certainly  the  whole  speech,  so  far  as  the  argument  is  con- 
cerned, is  an  incubus  quite  intolerable  to  civilization.  But  it  is  a  speech 
that  would  have  been  regarded  as  remarkably  moderate  anywhere  in  the 
United  States,  even  in  Boston,  for  twenty  years  afler  the  date  of  its 
delivery!  We  shall  not,  therefore,  be  surprised  that  in  the  England  of 
more  than  sixty  years  ago  a  casuistical  argument,  buttressed  with  "  Cursed 
be  Canaan,"  was  acceptable  to  a  Tory  constituency.  We  may  remember 
in  this  connection  that  as  much  as  eight  years  after  this  election  in  Newark 
the  law  of  England  still  gave  to  a  husband  the  same  rights  over  his  wife 
that  he  might  exercise  over  his  slave  !  In  such  a  condition  of  opinion  and 
usage,  we  need  hardly  expect  any  refinement  of  conscience  or  clear  recogni- 
tion of  human  rights. 

As  the  canvass  in  Newark  progressed,  it  became  evident  that  Glad- 
stone was  the  favorite.  The  influence  of  the  Duke  of  Newcastle,  exercised 
through  the  Conservative  Club,  secured  to  him  in  advance  about  six  hun- 
dred and  fifty  votes.  To  these  the  young  orator  succeeded  in  adding  before 
tlie  election  nearly  two  hundred  and  fifty  additional  pledges.  Notwith- 
standing his  alliance  with  the  past  as  against  the  progressive  principles 
represented  by  Serjeant  Wilde,  he  forged  to  the  front,  and  on  the  iith  of 
December  was  able  to  come  to  the  hustings  with  confidence  of  success. 

Here  aorain  the  scene  was  one  unfamiliar  to  American  readers.  It  was 
the  custom  of  the  English  constituencies  to  come  toofether  and  to  obliee 
their  candidates  to  appear  on  the  platform  in  turn,  as  if  to  show  their  parts. 
Each  might  say  what  he  would  in  the  way  of  a  speech,  and  each  was  sub- 


TRAVEL    AND    ENTRANCE    INTO    PARLIAMENT. 


69 


jected  to  a  running  fire  of  questions  and  bullying  well  calculated  to  try  the 
nerve  of  seasoned  politicians,  to  say  nothing  of  young  aspirants.  The  three 
candidates  appeared  at  the  date  mentioned,  and  Gladstone  was  subjected 
to  not  a  little  injustice  and  harsh  treatment  at  the  hands  of  the  Liberals. 

Mr.  Wilde  consumed  the  time  with  a  long  speech,  intending  to  wear 
out  the  patience  of  the  Gladstone  following;  and  in  this  he  partly  suc- 
ceeded. Two  or  three  well-informed  leaders  of  the  Liberal  party  plied 
Gladstone  with  hard  questions,  which  might  well  put  him  at  his  wits'  end 
to  answer.  But  he  came  through  the  ordeal  with  less  hurt  and  more  dior- 
nity  than  might  have  been  expected.  His  opponents  had  managed  the 
affair  so  that  Gladstone's  address  must  come  at  a  late  hour  in  the  evening. 
Wilde  spoke  for  about  three  hours.  The  young  candidate  could  do  no  more 
than  say  a  few  words  on  leading  topics  before  nightfall.  The  Liberals  in  the 
crowd  interrupted  him  with  yellings,  and  when  the  show  of  hands  was 
called,  it  was  evident  that  Wilde  and  Handley  were  In  the  lead.  Many  of 
Gladstone's  supporters  had  gone  away,  and  the  enemy  were  in  possession 
of  the  hustings. 

Under  these  circumstances  it  became  necessary  that  a  formal  poll  be 


SCENE   AT   THE    HUSTINGS    IN    THE    DAYS   OF   OPEN    ELECTION. 


yO  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

held.  If  the  reader  has  read  with  attention  Carlyle's  essay,  "  An  Election 
to  the  Long  Parliament,"  he  will  have  a  lively  impression  of  the  manners 
and  methods  of  an  English  constituency  such  as  it  was  from  the  middle  of 
the  seventeenth  to  nearly  the  first  quarter  of  the  nineteenth  century.  We 
need  not  here  recount  the  scenes  which  were  constantly  witnessed  in  the 
old  English  boroughs,  or  animadvert  on  the  methods  by  which  an  election 
was  carried  prior  to  the  passage  of  the  Reform  Bill.  Even  after  that  event 
the  manners  of  an  English  election  were  nearly  the  same  as  before;  but 
turbulence  and  mere  tricks,  such  as  that  practiced  by  Mr.  Wilde  on  the 
hustings,  could  not  prevail  to  defeat  the  capable  and  proper  young  Tory, 
who  had  been  defrauded  of  the  fruits  of  his  popularity  at  the  public  meet- 
ing. Indeed,  the  unfair  scheme  to  rob  him  of  his  rights  turned  somewhat 
in  his  favor,  and  when  the  poll  was  held,  instead  of  being  the  last,  he  was 
the  first  of  the  candidates.  The  tally  showed  for  Gladstone,  882  votes ;  for 
Handley,  793;  and  for  Wilde,  719. 

Though  Mr.  Gladstone  was  in  the  plurality,  he  was  very  far  from 
receiving  a  majority  of  the  suffrages.  This,  however,  sufficed ;  and  the 
successful  candidate  became  member  of  Parliament  for  the  first  time,  being 
as  yet  within  his  twenty-third  year.  The  election  was  significant  in  this — 
that  it  showed  the  temper  of  the  English  \'oters  in  declaring  for  reform  and 
then  choosing  men  of  Conservative  dispositions  to  hold  the  reform  in  check. 
The  like  spirit  was  manifested  throughout  England,  though  the  gains  for 
the  Tories  were  insufficient  to  restore  them  to  their  lost  ascendency. 

The  attention  of  Conservative  leaders  was  immediately  turned  to  the 
young  member-elect  from  Newark.  Mr.  Gladstone  seems  to  have  borne 
himself  with  remarkable  propriety,  and  to  have  been  in  no  great  measure 
inflated  by  his  success.  He  pressed  on,  however,  to  make  addresses  at 
different  places,  notably  before  the  Constitutional  Club  at  Nottingham  and 
at  Newark,  on  both  of  which  occasions  he  delivered  eloquent  and  able 
speeches,  conceived  and  uttered  in  the  manner  of  the  Tory  statesman,  A 
writer  has  pointed  out  the  significant  circumstance  that  the  orator,  in  addi- 
tion to  repeating  what  now  appear  to  be  his  inane  arguments  about  slavery, 
opposed  in  his  Newark  speech  a  proposition  then  pending  for  the  abolition 
of  certain  taxes  and  restrictions  on  the  public  press.  In  doing  so  he  made 
an  argument  to  show  that  the  press  tax  was  essential  to  the  maintenance 
of  the  revenue,  and,  secondly,  that  the  tax  in  question  had  a  wholesome 
influence  in  preventing  the  dissemination  of  false  and  corrupt  matter  by 
means  of  newspapers.  It  was  equivalent  to  saying  that  an  editor  would 
not  pay  a  tax  for  the  privilege  of  circulating  lies — a  proposition  clearly 
disproved  by  the  journalistic  history  of  all  civilized  countries  ! 

In  the  Li'fe  of  Gladstone^  by  George  Burnett  Smith,  we  have  preserved 
from   the  newspapers  of  the  day  some  extracts  out  of  the  chorus  of  cheers 


TRAVEL    AND    ENTRANCE    INTO    PARLIAMENT.  7 1 

and  hisses  that  arose  on  the  occasion  of  the  young  man's  first  election  to 
Parhament.  The  Nottingham  Joiiriial,  highly  pleased  with  the  result, 
speaking  of  the  opinion  that  the  election  had  a  ministerial  significance, 
said  :  "  The  delusion  has  now  vanished  and  made  room  for  sober  reason 
and  i:eflection.  .  .  .  The  return  of  Mr.  Gladstone — to  the  discomfiture  of 
the  learned  Serjeant  and  his  friends — has  restored  the  town  of  Newark  to 
that  high  rank  which  it  formerly  held  in  the  estimation  of  friends  of  order 
and  good  government.  We  venture  to  predict  that  the  losing  candidate 
[Wilde]  in  this  contest  has  suffered  so  severely  that  he  will  never  more 
show  his  face  at  Newark  on  a  similar  occasion."  The  extract  shows  that 
the  genus  scribblerus  politictis  is  the  same  in  all  generations.  Here  we 
have  the  town  of  Newark  "  saved  and  restored  "  by  the  election  of  a  young 
man  twenty-two  years  of  age,  chosen  by  plurality,  with  nearly  two  thirds 
of  the  vote  against  him  !  We  also  have  the  usual  and  well-known  prophecy 
that  the  defeated  candidate  is  utterly  ruined  and  done  for  world  without 
end  !  The  Reflector,  another  newspaper  of  Newark,  liberal  in  politics,  said  : 
"  Mr.  Gladstone  is  the  son  of  Gladstone  of  Liverpool,  a  person  who  (we  are 
speaking  of  the  father)  had  amassed  a  large  fortune  by  West  India 
dealings.  In  other  words,  a  great  part  of  his  gold  has  sprung  from  the 
blood  of  black  slaves.  Respecting  the  youth  himself — a  person  fresh  from 
the  college,  and  whose  mind  is  as  much  like  a  sheet  of  white  foolscap  as 
possible — he  was  utterly  unknown.  He  came  recommended  by  no  claim  in 
the  world  except  the  will  of  the  duke.  The  duke  nodded  unto  Newark,  and 
Newark  sent  back  the  man,  or  rather  the  boy,  of  his  choice.  What !  is  this 
to  be,  now  that  the  Reform  Bill  has  done  its  work  1  Are  sixteen  hundred 
men  still  to  bow  down  to  a  wooden-headed  lord,  as  the  people  of  Egypt 
used  to  do  to  their  beasts,  to  their  reptiles,  and  their  ropes  of  onions } 
There  must  be  something  wrong — something  imperfect.  What  is  it  }  What 
is  wanting  ?  Why,  the  ballot  !  If  there  be  a  doubt  of  this  (and  we  believe 
there  is  a  doubt  even  among  intelligent  men)  the  tale  of  Newark  must  set 
the  question  at  rest.  Serjeant  Wilde  was  met  on  his  entry  into  the  town 
by  almost  the  whole  population.  He  was  greeted  everywhere,  cheered 
everywhere.  He  was  received  with  delight  by  his  friends  and  with  good 
and  earnest  wishes  for  his  success  by  his  nominal  foes.  The  voters  for 
Gladstone  went  up  to  that  candidate's  booth  (the  slave  driver  as  they  called 
him)  with  Wilde's  colors.  People  who  had  before  voted  for  Wilde  on  being 
asked  to  eive  their  suffraore  said  :  '  We  cannot,  we  dare  not.  We  have  lost 
half  our  business,  and  shall  lose  the  rest  if  we  go  against  the  duke.  We 
would  do  anything  in  our  power  for  Serjeant  Wilde  and  for  the  cause,  but 
we  cannot  starve  ! '  Now  what  say  ye,  our  merry  men,  touching  the  ballot  }  " 
Such  were  the  two  opinions  that  vented  themselves  in  respect  to  Glad- 
stone's election.     No  doubt  the   statesman  himself,  in  the  afterpart   of  his 


72 


LIFE    AND    TIMES    UE    WILLIA.M     E.    GLADSTONE. 


career,  would  have  cheerfully  coincided  with  what  was  said  by  the  Reflector 
against  himself  and  the  manner  of  his  first  election  to  the  House  of  Com- 
mons. It  can  hardly  be  doubted  that  the  organized  power  of  Toryism  was 
turned  by  the  Duke  of  Newcastle  upon  the  constituency  of  Newark  to 
secure  the  election  of  his  son's  friend  and  his  own  supporter  to  Parliament. 
It  will  be  noted  that  the  number  of  votes  secured  for  Gladstone  was  just 
fairly  sufficient  to  make  his  election  unambiguous.  Certainly  the  carping 
of  the  Liberal  opposition  did  not  go  so  far  as  to  asperse  the  character  and 
talents  of  the  young  man  who  had  come  home  from  his  travels  in  Italy  to 
begin  one  of  the  longest  and  most  conspicuous  public  careers  known  in 
history. 


BLACKFRIARS    BRIDGE,    LoMJON. 


FIRST    PASSAGES    IN    HOUSE    OF    COMMONS. 


n 


CHAPTER   V. 

First  Passages  in  House  of  Commons. 

N  connection  with  Mr.  Gladstone's  entrance  into  Parliament  we 
note  a  circumstance  showing  the  great  superiority  of  one  part 
of  the  British  s)stem  over  the  corresponding  part  of  American 
method.  In  our  American  Congressional  s)'stem  the  usage 
has  taken  such  form  under  the  Constitution  as  to  postpone  the 
entrance  of  the  new  members  into  the  House  of  Representatives  for  much 
more  than  a  year  after  the  time  when  they  are  elected,  and  for  about  a  year 
and  a  half  from  the  date  of  their  canvass  before  the  people.  Meanwhile 
the  old  Congress,  probably  out  of  accord  with  public  opinion  and  perhaps 
discredited  at  the  late  election,  goes  on  occupying  its  place  and  performing 
w^hat  political  mummery  soever  the  exigency  of  the  defeated  party  seems  to 
require.  In  England  the  members  of  the  new  Parliament  come  in  fresh 
from  their  constituencies.  No  more  than  a  brief  interval  elapses  after  the 
election  until  the  new  House  is  constituted.  In  Mr.  Gladstone's  case  his 
election  occurred  on  the  iith  and  12th  of  December,  1832,  and  the  new 
House  of  Commons  of  which  he  M-as  a  member  was  convened  on  the  2gth 
of  the  January  following.  The  king's  speech  from  the  throne  was  delivered 
in  the  usual  style  on  the  5th  of  February.  William  IV  was  in  the  third 
year  of  his  reign. 

As  we  have  said,  the  constitution  and  temper  of  the  first  Reform 
Parliament  were  much  more  conservative  than  might  have  been  expected. 
After  reforming  the  basis  of  the  House  of  Commons,  England,  like  a  cautious 
farmer  who  has  broken  his  fields  by  a  new  method  but  chooses  to  plant  the 
seed  and  till  the  crop  in  the  accustomed  manner,  paused  in  the  course  toward 
radicalism,  and  the  new  House,  though  of  different  materials,  was  much  the 
same  in  spirit  as  its  predecessor.  Two  great  measures,  however,  were  on 
that  must,  in  the  nature  of  the  case,  be  now  definitely  adjusted.  One  was 
the  final  withdrawal  of  the  immense  trade  monopoly  which  had  been  enjoyed 
by  the  British  East  India  Company,  and  the  other  was  the  proposition  to 
abolish  slavery  in  the  West  Indies.  The  islands  most  concerned  in  the  latter 
proposition  were  Trinidad  and  Jamaica;  also  Demerara.  There  had  been 
in  these  islands,  since  the  establishment  of  the  British  ascendency,  a  sort  of 
modified  Creole  servitude  which  the  English  planters  had  used  in  the  culti- 
vation of  their  estates.  It  had  been  found,  however,  that  native  Africans 
could  better  endure  the  heat  of  tropical  sugar  fields  than  could  the  West 
Indian  natives  or  the  hybrids  that  abounded  In  the  islands.  African  slavery 
thus  became  a  deeply  fixed  institution,  and  Its  abolition  was  opposed  with 
all  the  usual  arguments  born  of  Interest,  expediency,  and  superstition. 


74  LItE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

It  chanced  that  this  question  of  aboHshing  West  Indian  slavery  fur- 
nished the  first  occasion  for  Mr.  Gladstone  to  address  the  House  of  Com- 
mons. The  opportunity  was  not  sought,  but  was  rather  forced  on  the  young 
parliamentarian.  We  have  referred,  in  a  former  chapter,  to  the  fact  that 
John  Gladstone  of  Liverpool  owned  large  plantations  in  Demerara.  His  , 
estate  there  was  known  as  Vreeden  Hoop.  It  was  cultivated  by  African 
slaves,  under  the  immediate  direction  of  a  kinsman  of  the  Gladstones  named 
Maclean.  The  sugar  industry  in  the  islands  had  increased  at  the  expense 
of  that  of  cotton  and  coffee.  It  was  alleged  that  the  slaves  on  the  sugar 
plantations  had  been  greatly  overworked,  maltreated,  and  poorly  fed,  and 
that  the  result  was  a  large  falling  off  in  the  number  of  slaves,  with  the  con- 
sequent necessity  of  further  importations  from  Africa. 

In  May  of  1833  a  proposition  was  brought  forward  for  the  emancipa- 
tion of  the  blacks  of  the  West  Indies.  The  subject  brought  on  a  long  and 
excited  debate.  Public  opinion  had  in  the  meanwhile  advanced  to  the 
extent  of  putting  the  defenders  and  apologists  of  slavery  at  a  disadvantage, 
and  their  defense  was  not  delivered  with  the  accustomed  spirit  of  their 
party.  On  the  contrary,  it  took  the  form  of  a  mild  appeal  for  going  slow  in 
the  work  of  emancipation,  of  making  it  gradual,  of  postponing,  of  getting  as 
much  as  possible  in  compensation,  and  of  holding  back  from  finality  a 
measure  which  could  not  be  longer  stayed. 

While  this  proposition  was  under  discussion,  one  of  the  speakers,  Lord  J 
Howick,  who  had  been  Undersecretary  for  the  Colonies,  made  a  liberal 
speech,  in  which  he  animadverted  with  some  bitterness  upon  the  condition 
of  the  slave-worked  estates  in  Demerara.  He  showed  that  on  the  planta- 
tion owned  by  John  Gladstone  and  operated  by  his  kinsman  there  had  been 
a  decrease  of  seventy-one  slaves,  and  that  this  was  due  to  the  severity  of 
the  treatment  to  which  they  had  been  subjected  in  the  sugar  fields.  The 
speech  was  near  to  being  an  attack  upon  the  character  of  the  elder  Glad- 
stone, and  a  charge  of  inhumanity  for  greed  In  the  operation  of  the  sugar 
plantation. 

The  occasion  thus  suddenly  presented  Itself  for  the  member  from 
Newark  to  make  his  maiden  speech.  On  the  17th  of  May,  1833,  he  first 
addressed  the  House.  He  warded  as  well  as  he  could  the  charges  made  by 
Lord  Howick.  He  attempted  to  show  that  the  decrease  in  the  population 
of  the  Demerara  estate  was  not  attributable  directly  to  the  production  of 
sugar  or  the  severity  of  the  treatment  to  which  the  slaves  were  subjected. 
but  to  a  shifting  In  the  character  of  the  population  at  large.  He  conceded 
that  the  production  of  sugar  demanded  a  greater  severity  of  labor  than 
was  required  in  the  production  of  cotton  or  coffee  ;  but  he  argued  that  this 
hardship  was  Inseparable  from  the  nature  of  human  employments.  It  was 
so  in  Great  Britain,  in  the  home  islands,  that  some  kinds  of  labor  were  more 


FIRST    PASSAGES    IN    HOUSE    OF    COMMONS.  75 

severe  than  others.  Some  employments  shortened  life.  The  worker  in  the 
lead  mines  did  so  at  the  constant  risk  of  his  health  and  with  the  certainty 
of  curtailing  the  period  of  his  existence.  They  who  painted  in  shops  in- 
haled fumes  from  paint  pots,  and  were  injured  thereby.  Of  a  like  neces- 
sarily severe  and  somewhat  dangerous  character  was  the  labor  of  producing 
sugar  cane.  The  speaker  denied  the  imputations  against  the  character  of  his 
father  and  his  lieutenant  in  Demerara.  The  latter  was  a  humane  man,  and 
the  speaker  read  letters  recently  received  from  him  to  attest  the  amicable 
relations  between  the  superintendent  and  the  well-contented  slaves.  On 
the  whole,  the  speech  was  well  delivered,  was  well  received  by  the  Conserv- 
atives, and  heard  with  as  much  patience  as  might  be  expected  by  the 
Liberals. 

The  debate  went  on  with  the  usual  variations  until  the  3rd  of  June, 
when  Gladstone  spoke  again  on  the  same  subject.  In  the  half-month  that 
intervened  he  had  diligently  prepared  himself,  and  was  now  better  able  to 
show  the  untruth  of  the  charges  which  had  been  made  against  his  father 
and  his  method  of  management.  In  the  first  part  of  his  second  speech  the 
young  parliamentarian  confined  himself  to  what  Lord  Howick  had  said 
about  the  elder  Gladstone's  estate,  as  illustrating  the  evil  genius  of  slavery. 
Having  disposed  of  this  part,  the  speaker  went  on  to  discuss  the  general 
question  before  the  House.  He  spoke  of  the  slave  system  as  it  existed  in  the 
West  Indies.  He  conceded  the  abuses  of  the  system,  but  refused  to  admit 
the  evil  of  the  thing  itself  Seeing  that  the  Parliament,  backed  by  public 
opinion,  was  determined  to  make  an  end  of  slavery,  he  pleaded  for  mod- 
eration. He  would  temporize  with  the  existing  condition  ;  would  mitigate 
it ;  would  cure  it  by  degrees ;  would  apply  the  religious  salve  to  the  wounds 
of  both  slave  and  master ;  would  admit  that  human  servitude  was  a  thing 
repugnant  to  the  British  Constitution  ;  but  that  it  could  not  be  extirpated 
in  a  day  or  a  year.  There  must  be  gradual  emancipation — if  any.  Property 
rights  must  be  guarded.  Englishmen  had  honestly  acquired  their  human 
property,  and  this  could  not  be  taken  away  without  just  and  ample 
compensation.  At  the  same  time  many  humane  principles  ought  to  be 
introduced  in  the  relations  of  slaves  and  master.  Elevation  of  the  Negroes 
must  precede  emancipation.  All  should  be  educated  and  Christianized. 
Moreover,  the  legislatures  of  the  insular  colonies  must  be  invoked  in  joint 
action  with  the  House  before  emancipation  could  be  legally  reached.  Vio- 
lent interference  with  slavery  would  prove  to  be  not  only  a  great  injustice, 
but  a  practical  disturbance  of  the  industries  and  the  whole  social  condition 
of  the  West  Indies.  The  House  did  not  possess  the  requisite  information, 
the  unquestioned  basis  of  fact  necessary  for  the  consideration  of  so  serious 
a  proposition  as  abolition.  It  would  be  of  the  most  doubtful  expediency, 
anyhow,  to  emancipate  ignorant  and  wicked  blacks.    No  doubt  many  of  the 


76  LIFE    AND    TIMES    UK    WILLIAM     E,    GLADSTONE. 

planters  would  themselves  desire  to  be  free  from  the  burden  of  responsibil- 
ity which  was  put  upon  them  by  the  existing  system.  Such  men,  as  well  as 
all  others,  should  be  regarded.  Government  should  not  think  itself  able  to 
abolish  slavery  by  a  violent  and  arbitrary  act.  Such  a  measure  would  bring 
confusion  and  ruin  to  the  colonies  of  Great  Britain,  and  conduce  to  the 
downfall  of  the  empire.  In  the  last  clause  we  may  discover  the  usual 
alarmist  prophecy  with  which  the  neophyte  statesman  is  always  prone  to 
terrorize  his  countrymen  into  the  support  of  his  party  and  his  measure. 

The  reader  is  aware  of  the  result  of  this  orreat  debate  in  which  Glad- 
stone  for  the  first  time  showed  his  powers  in  parliamentary  speech.  The 
House  of  Commons  went  forward  to  the  legitimate  result  of  such  a  discus- 
sion. Colonial  slavery  was  abolished,  with  compensation  to  the  slaveholders. 
The  sum  of  twenty  millions  sterling  was  voted  In  payment  for  the  slaves 
emancipated  from  the  ownership  of  their  masters.  Thus,  in  the  years  1833- 
34,  In  the  outlying  parts  of  the  British  empire,  as  well  as  In  the  home 
kingdom,  slavery,  or  Involuntary  servitude,  except  for  the  commission  of 
crime,  ceased  to  exist. 

The  next  question  that  provoked  an  effort  on  Gladstone's  part  was  one 
relating  to  alleged  corruption  in  the  politics  of  Liverpool.  A  committee  of 
investigation  had  been  appointed  to  look  Into  the  circumstances  of  the  elec- 
tion of  1830.  Liverpool  had  been  the  constituency  of  George  Canning  dur- 
ing the  period  of  his  greatness.  The  custom  of  the  time  permitted,  if  it  did 
not  sanction,  the  use  of  money  and  other  corrupt  motives  In  carrying  elec- 
tions. Some  of  the  boroughs  had  gained  a  bad  reputation  on  the  score  of 
bribery.  Nearly  all  the  towns  in  the  kingdom  were  more  or  less  infected 
with  this  form  of  political  vice.  On  several  occasions  men  In  Liverpool 
were  openly  bribed  to  support  this  policy  or  that. 

This  condition  of  affairs  was  a  moral  element  in  the  debates  that  led  to 
the  adoption  of  the  Reform  Bill.  On  one  occasion  Lord  Cochrane  openly 
declared  in  the  House  of  Commons  that  he  himself  had  sent  the  towncrier 
through  the  town  of  Honiton,  calling  the  voters  who  had  supported  him  to 
go  to  the  town  banker  and  receive  ten  pounds  ten  shillings  each  as  their 
share  In  good  government.  Liverpool  had  vigorously  applied  her  commer- 
cial system  in  her  elections,  and  had  become  notorious  as  one  among  the 
most  corrupt  constituencies  in  the  United  Kingdom. 

In  the  debate  on  this  question,  Gladstone  spoke  for  the  third  time,  pal- 
liating as  much  as  he  could  the  condition  of  affairs  In  his  native  city.  He 
showed  In  a  conservative  way  that  direct  bribery  had  not  been  known  in 
Liverpool,  at  least  not  systematically  practiced,  before  the  year  1830.  This 
was  much  !  The  speaker  also  urged  that  in  1830  the  election  had  not  been 
particularly  corrupt,  that  only  a  few  Instances  of  bribery  had  been  actually 
shown,  that  a  good  deal  of  what  was  said  was  merely  political  scandal,  and 


FIRST    PASSAGES    IN     HOUSE    OF    COMMONS. 


11 


GEORGE   CANNING. 


78  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

that  the  House  did  not  possess  the  requisite  information  upon  which  to  vote 
a  continuance  of  the  incpiiry.  The  resuk  of  the  discussion  showed  Mr. 
Gladstone  to  be  greatly  in  the  minority  ;  for  the  proposition  to  prosecute 
the  investigation  was  carried  by  a  vote  of  nearly  two  to  one. 

Several  other  measures  were  presented  at  this  session  of  Parliament 
on  which  an  ambitious  young  Tory  might  well  have  opinions.  Among 
these  was  a  scheme  embodied  in  what  was  known  as  the  Church  Temporal- 
ities Bill.  The  question  related  to  the  Established  Church  in  Ireland.  Al- 
ready there  was  a  beginning  of  that  agitation  which  was  to  continue  for  a 
quarter  of  a  century,  and  to  end  only  with  disestablishment.  The  pending 
proposition  was  made  by  Lord  Althorp.  The  measure  contemplated  the 
reduction  of  episcopal  livings  in  Ireland,  and  some  rectification  of  the  taxes 
which  were  laid  with  so  much  injustice  upon  the  Catholic  Irish  for  the  sup- 
port of  the  foreign  establishment. 

Such  a  bill,  however  just  and  expedient,  must  needs  encounter  the 
opposition  of  the  Conservatives.  Mr.  Gladstone,  even  in  his  first  term  of  serv- 
ice, aspired  to  leadership  of  the  younger  Tory  contingent  in  the  House.  On 
the  8th  of  July,  1833,  he  made  a  speech  on  the  Althorp  Bill,  opposing  it, 
and  setting  forth  in  good  form  the  reasons  of  his  opposition.  He  began  by 
saying  that  he  could  not  content  himself  with  mere  silence  and  a  negative 
vote  on  such  a  momentous  occasion.  To  the  young  statesman,  all  occasions 
of  this  kind  are  momentous  !  He  thrives  on  things  momentous,  and  secures 
his  leadership  by  some  a^'gumentiiin  ad  rem  miractilain. 

Gladstone  said  that  he  w^ould  defend  the  Irish  Church.  There  mieht 
be  abuses  in  that  establishment  ;  he  was  not  prepared  to  deny  the  existence 
of  such  abuses;  but  the  injury  of  the  Church  by  a  parliamentary  act  could 
not  be  justified  on  the  score  of  abuse.  If  there  were  abuse,  then  former 
Parliaments  were  to  blame  for  it.  No  doubt  the  Protestant  Episcopal 
Church  in  Ireland  had  not  flourished;  but  the  low  condition  of  the  Church 
in  that  part  of  the  empire  could  not  be  improved  by  an  act  calculated  to 
work  still  greater  inefficiency.  With  the  passage  of  such  a  measure  the 
Irish  Church  would  be  placed  at  still  greater  disadvantage.  Let  none  think 
to  strengthen  an  institution  by  weakening  its  resources.  The  number  of 
episcopal  districts  should  by  no  means  be  reduced.  The  Irish  Church,  as 
well  as  the  Eno-lish  Church,  was  a  national  establishment.  The  orovern- 
ment  was  in  honor  and  all  good  policy  obliged  to  maintain  the  episcopal 
organization  in  Ireland  as  well  as  in  England.  The  paternity  of  the  State 
must  be  recognized.  To  reduce  the  resources  of  the  Irish  clergy,  when  that 
body  was  already  at  so  low  an  ebb  of  force,  must  cripple  and  disorganize  the- 
religious  establishment  in  an  important  part  of  the  United  Kingdom.  Per- 
haps the  government  would  succeed  in  forcing  the  bill  through  ;  but  it 
would  be  against  the  best  interests  of  the  Irish  people,  hurtful  to  the  Estab- 


FIRST    PASSAGES    IN    HOUSE    UF    COMMONS.  79 

lished  Church  In  particular,  and  inimical  to  the  spirit  of  the  British  Consti- 
tution. Such  was  the  tenor  of  Gladstone's  speech,  which  of  course  could 
not  avail  against  the  large  majority  of  the  Liberals. 

Another  measure  which  called  out  the  young  statesman  was  a  Non- 
conformist Bill,  proposed  by  Mr.  Hume,  declaring  it  no  longer  necessary  for 
intending  students  at  the  University  of  Oxford  to  subscribe  to  the  Thirty- 
nine  Articles  of  Religion.  Against  this  proposition  Gladstone  made  his  fifth 
speech  in  the  House.  He  attacked  the  proposed  measure  on  the  ground 
that  it  contained  the  dangerous  principle  of  religious  liberty.  Religion,  he 
thought,  was  an  affair  of  the  State.  It  was  made  so  in  the  Constitution  of 
Great  Britain.  The  Protestant  Episcopal  Church  was  the  legal  and  consti- 
tutional establishment  of  the  realm.  The  subscription  of  the  Thirty-nine  Ar- 
ticles at  Oxford  was  pro  forma  anyhow.  Oxford  was  a  public  institution 
of  Great  Britain.  The  subscription  of  the  articles  was  as  little  as  could  be 
expected.  The  passage  of  the  Nonconformist  mea,sure  would  bring  con- 
fusion not  only  to  the  university,  but  everywhere.  Those  directly  respon- 
sible for  the  management  of  the  university  would  hardly  remain  In  charge 
of  an  institution  the  gates  of  which  were  thrown  open  to  the  admission  of 
an  irreligious  and  un-English  throng  given  over  to  a  condition  of  moral 
anarchy.  All  this  was  excellent  Toryism  ;  but  It  could  not  avail  against 
the  purpose  of  the  Liberals  who  passed  Humes  Admission  Bill  by  a  major- 
ity of  more  than  two  to  one. 

On  the  whole,  Gladstone's  early  work  in  Parliament,  though  Inspired 
with  reactionary  principles  and  wholly  discordant  with  his  subsequent 
career,  was  highly  successful.  He  became  a  leader  almost  from  the  first. 
The  Tories  began  to  look  to  him  as  a  young  man  of  great  promise.  It 
should  be  remarked  that  the  Liberals  also  respected  him,  however  much 
they  may  have  abhorred  his  politics.  The  constituency  of  Newark  was 
pleased  to  note  the  prominence  attained  by  the  young  man  whom  the  town 
had  sent  as  Its  representative  In  the  House  of  Commons.  The  Duke  of 
Newcastle  was  highly  pleased  with  his  lieutenant. 

Meanwhile  the  ministry  of  Lord  Melbourne  began  to  fall  to  pieces. 
The  student  of  parliamentary  history  is  ever  and  anon  surprised  at  the 
unaccountable  decay  of  governments.  A  political  triumph,  however  over- 
whelming, argues  nothing  as  to  the  perpetuity  of  an  administration  based 
thereon.  In  the  present  case  Lord  Althorp,  one  of  the  most  conciliatory 
and  amiable  members  of  the  ministry,  was  transferred  to  the  House  of 
Lords.  Lord  Melbourne  tried  to  patch  the  breach  in  the  dike,  but  the 
king  objected  to  the  reconstruction  of  the  Liberal  cabinet.  Confusion  came 
In,  and  at  the  sueeestlon  of  the  Duke  of  Wellington,  Sir  Robert  Peel  was 
called  home  from  the  Continent  to  form  a  new  ministry  ab  ovo. 

The  half-conservative  temper  of  Sir  Robert  Peel  was  well  known,  and 


8o  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

even  Toryism  had  reason  to  hope  for  something  at  his  hands.  What  should 
the  new  premier  do  in  December  of  1834  but  call  William  E.  Gladstone  to 
attach  himself  to  the  government  as  Junior  Lord  of  the  Treasury.'^  Here 
was  a  sudden  rise,  indeed  ;  for  Mr.  Gladstone  when  summoned  still  lacked 
five  days  of  the  completion  of  his  twenty-fifth  year.  The  precocity  in  the 
case  was  by  no  means  equal  to  that  of  William  Pitt ;  but  it  sufficed. 

The  sudden  elevation  to  place  and  influence  made  it  necessary  for  Mr. 
Gladstone,  in  accordance  with  the  Constitution,  to  submit  himself  to  his 
constituency  for  approval.  Very  salutary  is  that  check  which  the  people 
of  Great  Britain  in  their  capacity  as  electors  have  over  that  powerful 
ministry  upon  which  the  whole  administration  of  the  empire  depends.  In 
the  first  place,  the  minister-elect  must  be  a  member  of  Parliament.  They 
who  are  in  counsel  to  form  a  new  government  may  not  go  outside  of  the 
House  of  Commons  to  gather  the  ministerial  elements  of  it.  Moreover, 
the  member  -chosen  must  return  to  his  constituents  and  be  reelected  before 
he  can  participate  in  the  government. 

Thus  did  Mr.  Gladstone  in  1835.  He  appealed  to  his  constituents  in 
Newark,  issuing  to  them  an  address,  in  which  he  reviewed  the  course  of 
events,  and  showed  the  circumstances  of  the  political  transformation  which 
had  swept  over  the  country.  He  now  took  the  ground  that  the  friends  of 
the  Melbourne  ministry  had  fallen  away  because  of  their  fear  that  the 
Liberal  party  would  rush  forward  into  the  untried  experimentation  of  radi- 
calism. The  writer  stated  his  belief  that  it  was  the  duty  of  all  patriots, 
without  distinction  of  party,  to  uphold  the  crown  and  to  defend  as  invio- 
lable the  time-honored  principles  and  methods  of  the  British  Constitution. 
Under  that  policy  the  country  had  flourished  and  grown  to  greatness.  The 
proper  method  now  to  be  pursued  was  temperately  and  dispassionately  to 
reform  the  abuses  of  both  Church  and  State.  This  policy  had  become  the 
duty  of  every  true  Conservative.  New  conditions  had  entered  in,  and  some 
things  had  been  changed.  For  the  rest,  the  W'hole  pursuit  of  the  statesman 
should  be  reformatory  and  corrective.  The  address  exhibited  greater  talent 
and  more  of  the  coming  Gladstonian  elements  of  political  sagacity  than  any 
of  his  former  papers. 

At  the  election  of  1832  Mr.  Gladstone  had  been  returned  from  Newark 
along  with  Mr.  Handley,  who  was  also  a  moderate  Conservative.  The  latter 
appears  to  have  been  a  member  of  no  marked  abilities.  After  two  years 
of  service  he  retired  from  the  House,  and  in  the  election  of  1835  Sergeant 
Wilde,  that  able  Liberal,  who,  according  to  the  Nottingham  Journal,  was 
"  never  more  to  show  his  face  at  Newark  on  a  similar  occasion,"  was  chosen 
to  serve,  with  Gladstone  for  his  colleague.  The  latter  came  to  Newark  for 
reelection  in  full  feather.  The  Duke  of  Newcastle  proudly  attended  him. 
There  was  a  ereat  ball  at  Newark  in  honor  of  the  occasion.      Enthusiasm 


FIRST    PASSAGES    IN    HOUSE    OF    COMMONS.  8 1 

ran  high.  After  the  foregone  election  ratifying  the  popular  representative's 
appointment  as  Junior  Lord  of  the  Treasury  there  was  an  ovation  in  New- 
ark, in  which  Gladstone  was  taken  up  in  an  elegant  chair  and  borne  away 
on  a  carriage  drawn  by  six  caparisoned  horses,  from  Clinton  Arms  Inn  to 
the  committee  rooms  of  tlie  city,  where  the  young  orator  made  a  great 
speech  to  a  crowd  constituting  the  major  part  of  the  population.  The  event 
may  be  regarded  as  the  beginning  of  a  chorus  destined  to  reverberate,  with 
rise  and  fall,  through  England  for  fully  sixty  years. 

Thus  William  E.  Gladstone  became  an  undermember  in  the  ministry 
of  Sir  Robert  Peel.  He  has  himself  given  an  interesting  account  of  his 
entrance  into  ministerial  life  and  of  his  first  meeting  with  Lord  Aberdeen. 
In  a  preface  to  the  Life  of  the  Earl  of  Aberdeen,  Mr.  Gladstone  says: 

"On  an  evening  in  the  month  of  January,  1835,  I  was  sent  for  by  Sir 
Robert  Peel,  and  received  from  him  the  offer,  which  I  accepted,  of  the 
Undersecretaryship  of  the  Colonies.  From  him  I  went  on  to  Lord  Aber- 
deen, who  was  thus  to  be,  in  official  home-talk,  my  master.  I  may  confess 
that  I  went  in  fear  and  trembling.  I  knew  Lord  Aberdeen  only  by  public 
rumor.  Distinction  of  itself,  naturally  and  properly,  rather  alarms  the 
young.  I  had  heard  of  his  high  character;  but  I  had  also  heard  of  him  as 
a  man  of  cold  manners,  close  and  even  haughty  reserve.  It  was  dusk  when 
I  entered  his  room — the  one  on  the  first  floor,  with  the  bow  window  look- 
ing to  the  park — so  that  I  saw  his  figure  rather  than  his  countenance.  I 
do  not  recollect  the  matter  of  the  conversation  ;  but  I  well  remember  that, 
before  I  had  been  three  minutes  with  him,  all  my  apprehensions  had  melted 
away  like  snow  in  the  sun.  I  came  away  from  that  interview,  conscious 
indeed — as  who  could  fail  to  be  conscious  ? — of  his  dignity,  but  of  a  dignity 
so  tempered  by  a  peculiar  purity  and  gentleness,  and  so  associated  with 
impressions  of  his  kindness  and  even  friendship,  that  I  believe  I  felt 
more  about  the  wonder  of  his  being  at  that  time  so  misunderstood  by 
the  outer  world  than  about  the  new  duties  and  responsibilities  of  my  new 
office." 

We  should  note  before  passing  from  this  stage  of  the  Gladstonian 
career  the  beginning  of  one  of  the  great  questions  which  were  to  occupy 
the  statesman's  future  time  and  purpose.  It  was  the  question  of  the  Church 
and  the  State  ;  of  the  relations  of  the  one  to  the  other.  Two  out  of  the 
five  principal  speeches  which  he  made  during  his  first  terms  of  parliamen- 
tary service  were  on  this  theme.  We  may  discover  in  his  speech  on  the 
Irish  Temporalities  Bill,  and  also  in  his  remarks  against  the  removal  of  the 
relio-ious  test  for  the  admission  of  students  at  Oxford,  the  grerms  of  Mr. 
Gladstone's  first  book.  We  may  regard  that  work  as  having  begun  with 
the  proposition  to  curtail  the  Episcopal  establishment  in  Ireland. 

It  was  about  four  years  from  this  date  until  the  appearance  of  the  book 
6 


82  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

entitled,  The  State  in  its  Relations  with  the  Church,  by  W.  E.  Glad- 
stone, Esq.,  late  student  of  Christchurch  and  M.  P.  for  Newark.  In  the 
interim,  no  doubt,  his  mind  was  much  occupied  with  thinking  and  com- 
posing on  the  theme  which  first  carried  him  into  literature.  His  Oxford 
education,  and,  indeed,  his  whole  antecedence  and  environment,  tonstrained 
him  to  be  a  Church-of-England  man /^r  excellence  ;  and  it  was  natural  that 
he  should  soon  make  the  attempt  to  justify  to  himself  the  union  of  that 
Church  with  the  established  political  and  civil  order  ;  that  Is,  with  the 
State. 

The  appointment  to  be  Junior  Lord  of  the  Treasury  was  soon  followed 
with  a  more  distinct  and  unequivocal  recognition.  The  Peel  ministry 
adopted  the  maxim  that  the  Reform  Act  was  a  finality  ;  that  it  was  not  to 
be  undone  ;  that  the  measure  had  become  a  part  of  the  British  Constitution  ; 
that  under  the  new  methods  it  was  the  business  of  government  to  go 
forward  moderately,  conservatively,  with  the  reform  of  those  abuses  the 
existence  of  which  had  become  notorious  with  the  Liberal  agitation.  This 
theory  of  political  expediency  Gladstone  adopted  from  his  chief.  It  appears 
that  Sir  Robert  was  highly  pleased  with  the  Junior  Lord  of  the  Treasury, 
for  just  after  the  meeting  of  the  House,  in  February  of  1835,  William  E. 
Gladstone  was  promoted  to  be  Undersecretary  for  the  Colonies.  He  had 
shown  interest  in  the  colonial  question  not  only  In  Parliament,  but  in 
outside  discussion,  and  had  pretty  thoroughly  informed  himself  respecting 
the  insular  administrations  of  the  empire.  His  appointment  to  be  under- 
secretary was,  therefore,  fit  to  be  made.  It  is  worthy  of  note  that  within  a 
month  from  receiving  his  portfolio  he  brought  in  a  bill,  conceived  In  a  large 
and  liberal  spirit,  for  regulating  the  passenger  traffic  in  merchant  vessels  to 
the  West  Indies  and  the  main  coast  of  the  Americas.  The  introduction 
of  the  measure  produced  a  very  favorable  Impression  In  the  House,  tending 
to  confirm  the  good  opinion  which  that  body  already  held  of  the  young 
Conservative  leader. 

While  this,  the  first  ministerial  measure  prepared  by  Gladstone,  was 
pending  an  unexpected  political  swirl  came  on,  which  led  to  the  resignation 
of  the  Peel  government  and  the  return  of  Lord  Melbourne  to  power.  The 
British  nation  quickly  tires  of  its  own  methods.  It  is,  without  doubt,  the 
most  stubborn  and  opinionated  people  in  the  world.  First  passing  a 
Reform  Bill,  England  put  the  administration  of  it  in  the  hands  of  those 
who  had  opposed  it  !  Presently  the  absurdity  of  that  method  began  to 
declare  itself,  and  the  ministry  of  Sir  Robert  Peel  hegTin,  pari  passu,  to  be 
weakened.  The  Liberal  elements  were  able,  at  the  very  opening  of  Parlia- 
ment, to  defeat  the  ministerial  candidate  for  Speaker.  This  was  a  blow,  to 
begin  with.  Then  came  Lord  John  Russell  with  a  resolution  taking  up 
again   the  subject  of  the   temporalities  of  the    Irish   Church.     Lord  John's 


FIRST    PASSAGES    IN    HOUSE    OF    COMMONS.  83 

motion,  however,  was  defeated  after  a  hot  debate,  in  the  course  of  which 
Mr.  Gladstone  took  a  leading  part. 

In  this  Speech  he  followed  the  same  line  of  argument  which  he  had 
pursued  at  the  former  session.  The  Church  existed  under  protection  of  the 
State,  and  in  alliance  with  it.  It  was  the  business  of  the  State  to  support 
the  Church,  and  not  to  invade  her  existing  rights  or  reduce  her  properties. 
The  proposition  of  Lord  John  Russell  was  covertly  aimed  against  the 
Church  establishment  itself  It  signified  ultimately  the  complete  divorce  of 
Church  and  State.  That  disastrous  scheme  would  be  promoted  by  the 
present  agitation.  The  element  of  religion  ought  to  enter  into  every  British 
administration.  The  views  and  wishes  of  visionaries  and  theorists  should 
not  be  allowed  to  prevail  over  the  long-established  policy  of  Great  Britain. 
England  would  sink  away  from  the  high  rank  she  had  reached  if  the  foun- 
dations of  her  greatness  were  thus  disturbed.  For  himself,  the  speaker 
strongly  hoped  never  to  live  to  see  the  day  when  a  measure  such  as  that 
proposed  could  be  ratified  by  a  British  Parliament  to  the  undoing  of  the 
realm. 

The  debate  evoked  all  of  the  Liberalism  of  the  House.  Lord  John 
Russell's  motion  was  adopted  by  a  majority  of  thirty-three.  The  action  was 
a  ministerial  defeat  on  a  vital  question,  and  this  was  followed  with  a  like 
result  when  the  Russell  motion  was  debated  in  committee.  Thus  it  was 
that  Sir  Robert  Peel  was  forced  from  office,  and  Lord  Melbourne  was 
recalled  to  organize  a  new  ministry.  Mr.  Gladstone  had  remained  in  office 
as  Undersecretary  for  the  Colonies  for  less  than  three  months.  He  went 
out  with  his  chief,  having  had  no  opportunity  to  show  his  parts  except  in 
the  preparation  of  his  bill  for  the  carriage  of  passengers  by  merchant  ships 
from  England  to  America. 

The  organization  of  the  second  Melbourne  ministry  was  the  signal  for 
an  extraordinary  outbreak  of  political  rancor.  The  debates  in  the  House 
of  Commons  degenerated  into  mere  denunciations,  quarrels,  and  personali- 
ties. To  his  credit,  Gladstone  took  no  part  in  these  unprincipled  encounters. 
By  holding  off  from  the  passing  fray,  however,  he  gained  in  respect  more 
than  he  lost  in  the  current  applause  of  political  nothings.  The  wreck  of  the 
Peel  ministry  had  left  him  in  opposition  to  the  government  of  Melbourne, 
though  it  might  be  remarked  that  his  Toryism  became  more  and  more 
moderated  with  each  stage  in  his  career.  He  had  not  yet  abandoned  his 
idols,  but  it  was  evident  that  he  had  less  confidence  in  them  than  when  he 
first  entered  public  life. 

On  one  question  Mr.  Gladstone  very  naturally  continued  in  a  sensitive 
frame  of  mind.  Slavery  had  now  been  abolished,  and  the  restoration  ot  that 
dreadful  system  was  henceforth  unthinkable — except  by  them  daft.  The 
changes  of  human  society,  however,  are  much  less  sudden  and  abrupt  than 


84  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

is  generally  supposed.  West  Indian  slavery  had  ceased  to  exist  under  the 
flag  of  England  ;  but  a  system  of  Negro  apprenticeship,  to  extend  from 
1834  to  1840,  had  taken  its  place.  It  was  not  long  until  Liberal  rumors 
were  circulated  that  the  apprentices  in  the  British  islands  were  as  much 
abused  as  the  slaves  had  been  before.  Such  reports  were  well  calculated  to 
stir  up  radical  indignation. 

On  the  22d  of  March,  1836,  a  resolution  was  offered  in  the  House  of 
Commons  by  Powell  Buxton,  to  inquire  into  the  system  of  apprenticeship 
which  had  sprung  up,  and  to  this  the  ministry  agreed.  In  the  course  of  the 
discussion,  Daniel  O'Connell,  of  great  fame,  made  an  attack  on  the  indus- 
trial conditions  in  the  West  Indies,  declaring  that  the  apprenticed  Negroes 
there  were  in  many  instances  worse  off  than  they  had  been  when  slaves. 
Apprenticeship,  indeed,  was  only  another  name  for  slavery.  The  abuses  of 
the  one  were  even  as  the  crimes  of  the  other.  To  this  Gladstone  spoke  in 
reply.  He  would  have  the  honorable  member  to  understand  that  many,  no 
doubt  a  majority,  of  the  British  West  Indian  planters  were  men  of  high  and 
humane  characters.  No  doubt  the  system  of  apprenticeship  had  its  evils ; 
but  these  had  been  exaggerated  by  radicals  and  agitators  for  political  effect. 
Apprenticeship  had  its  advantages  as  well  as  its  drawbacks.  The  condition 
of  the  emancipated  Negroes  of  the  West  Indies  was  steadily  improving. 
The  condition  would  continue  to  improve,  unless  the  ill-advised  agitation 
in  the  House  of  Commons  should  check  or  wholly  defeat  the  good  results 
of  the  Act  of  Emancipation.  The  attacks  which  honorable  members  had 
made  upon  the  evils  of  apprenticeship  were  gratuitous  and,  for  the  most  part, 
without  foundation  in  truth.  The  probabilities  are  that  in  this  controversy 
Mr.  Gladstone  had  the  advantao-e  in  the  aro^ument;  but  the  eovernment, 
by  aid  of  the  party  whip,  was  able  to  pass  the  Buxton  resolution  by  a  large 
majority. 

It  was  at  this  juncture,  when  Mr.  Gladstone  was  in  his  twenty-eighth 
year,  that  the  civil  commotions  in  Canada,  borne  by  report  and  exag- 
gerated by  rumor  to  the  House  of  Commons,  added  another  wave  to  the 
public  commotion.  It  is  necessary  to  glance  for  a  moment  at  the  conditions 
which  had  wrought  this  result.  In  the  year  1791  Upper  Canada  had 
been  divided  from  Lower,  A  separate  government  was  given  to  each. 
Lower  Canada  was  French;  Upper  Canada  was  English.  No  sooner  had 
the  division  been  effected  than  the  British  subjects  of  Upper  Canada  began 
to  discover  strong  sympathies  with  the  government  of  the  United  States. 
At  the  same  time  serious  breaks  occurred  between  the  legislative  assembly 
of  the  Lower  province  and  the  crown  officers  of  that  country. 

The  crown  officers  as  a  rule  stood  stoutly  to  the  interests  of  the  mother 
country  ;  but  the  popular  party  sought  to  promote  the  local  interests  of  the 
province.     A    revolutionary   tendency   appeared.     Sir   Francis   Head,   Gov- 


FIRST    PASSAGES    IN    HOUSE    OF    COMMONS. 


85 


DANIEL    O  CONNELL    ADDRESSING    HIS    COUNTRYMEN. 


86  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONP:. 

ernor  of  Upper  Canada,  instead  of  calling  out  his  regular  forces,  sent  those 
forces  to  assist  the  officers  of  the  lower  province,  and  summoned  the  local 
militia  to  put  down  the  insurgents  in  his  own  government.  He  was  success- 
ful in  restoring  order,  but  it  was  found  that  the  insurrection  had  really 
been  moved  by  the  hope  of  gaining  admission  into  the  American  union. 
Sir  Francis,  therefore,  had  run  a  narrow  risk  of  losing  his  province  alto- 
gether. He  was  succeeded  by  Lord  Durham,  who  began  his  administra- 
tion with  projects  to  reform  the  preexisting  methods. 

The  home  government  was  alarmed,  or  at  least  the  Tories  were  alarmed 
with  the  intelligence  that  Lord  Durham  was  about  to  become  a  greater 
revolutionist  in  Canada  than  the  rebels  themselves,  insomuch  that  he  was 
designated  by  the  London  Times  as  the  "  Lord  High  Seditioner."  An  agi- 
tation followed,  which  was  hardly  calmed  before  the  year  1840.  Lord  Dur- 
ham was  himself  overthrown ;  but  the  reformative  measures  which  he  advo- 
cated gradually  gained  ground  in  both  Canada  and  Great  Britain,  until  they 
became  the  virtual  foundation  of  the  Constitution  of  the  modern  Dominion. 

The  noise  and  rumor  of  all  this  stirred  the  House  of  Commons  pro- 
foundly. Lord  John  Russell  offered  a  series  of  resolutions  whereby  it  was 
hoped  to  calm  the  turbulence  in  Canada  and  to  heal  the  schism  between  the 
upper  province  and  Quebec.  The  question  debated  was  virtually  the  right 
of  the  Canadians  to  conduct  their  own  affairs.  Lord  Russell's  measure  was 
a  ministerial  scheme,  and  though  Mr.  Gladstone  was  now  in  the  opposition, 
he  supported  the  principles  propounded,  and  made  a  speech  in  support  of 
the  governmental  policy.  In  the  course  of  this  speech,  the  dread  which  the 
speaker  then  entertained  of  popular  government  was  strongly  mani- 
fested. He  made  the  point  that  it  was  the  business  of  every  patriot  under 
such  circumstances  to  rally  to  the  support  of  the  government,  as  if  only 
anarchy  and  political  ruin  lay  in  the  opposite  policy.  The  prerogatives  of 
the  crown  must  be  upheld  in  Canada  as  well  as  elsewhere.  The  Canadian 
House  of  Assembly  must  yield,  even  by  force,  to  the  exigencies  of  public 
order.  This  opinion  prevailed,  and  the  House  was  treated  to  the  spectacle 
of  a  moderate  though  undoubted  Tory  sustaining  the  Liberal  ministry  against 
the  Liberals  of  the  Canadian  provinces!  Such  are  the  unaccountable  con- 
tradictions and  absurdities  of  government  by  party. 

The  question  of  the  prerogatives  and  revenues  of  the  Church  again 
came  up  at  the  session  of  1837.  A  plan  of  reform  quite  revolutionary  in  its 
compass  and  methods  was  proposed  by  the  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer, 
who  was  Mr.  Spring  Rice.  The  measure  contemplated  the  organization  of 
a  commission,  Into  whose  hands  the  general  properties  of  the  Church  should 
be  transferred,  and  by  whom  the  benefits  to  the  bishops,  deans,  and  chapters 
of  the  Church  should  be  paid.  It  was  argued  that  by  the  better  manage- 
ment of   the  Church  estates    in    the    hands    of  the    commission,   a  larger 


FIRST    PASSAGES    IN    HOUSE    OF    COMMONS.  8/ 

aggregate  of  profits  would  be  derived,  to  the  extent  that  the  measure  pro- 
posed by  Lord  Althorp  for  reforming  the  Church  in  Ireland  might  be  passed 
without  loss  to  the  sum  total  of  the  revenues. 

This  ministerial  measure  was  attacked  by  Sir  Robert  Peel  and  by  Mr. 
Gladstone.  The  latter  threw  himself  with  more  than  wonted  energy  into 
the  debate.  He  laid  it  down  as  a  postulate  that  religion — organized  religion 
— is  the  basis  of  the  State.  This  it  is  that  gives  stability  to  the  constitu- 
tional structure  of  a  civilized  people.  It  was  so  in  Rome.  Rome  was 
mistress  of  the  world  not  because  of  her  armies  and  her  navies,  not  because 
of  her  Senate  and  her  consuls,  not  because  of  her  wealth  and  territorial 
extent,  but  because  of  a  certain  solidarity  in  Roman  society  that  had  the 
religious  order  as  its  basis  and  ultimate  reason.  So  also  was  it  in  Great 
Britain.  The  people  of  England  had  a  religion.  Being  Christian,  it  was 
a  much  more  important  safeguard  and  anchor  than  could  have  been  the 
pagan  system  of  Rome.  To  give  up  the  established  religious  order  or — • 
which  was  the  same  thing — to  weaken  It  by  adverse  legislation  would  be  an 
act  of  suicidal  folly  and  wickedness,  for  the  support  of  which  a  British  min- 
istry would  be  held  sternly  to  account  by  the  judgment  and  conscience  of 
the  age  and  by  posterity. 

This  appeal,  how^ever,  made  with  full  force  by  Gladstone,  could  not  pre- 
vail. The  measure  of  Mr.  Rice  was  carried,  though  the  majority  in  favor 
of  the  same  was  not  decisive.  The  speech  made  by  Gladstone  was  the 
longest  and  the  most  impassioned  of  any  which  he  had  thus  far  delivered  In 
the  Commons.  In  it  we  may  note  with  distinctness  the  rudimentary  evolu- 
tion of  the  book  which  he  was  presently  to  publish,  TJie  State  m  its  Rela- 
tions  with  the  Chtirch.  The  address  made  against  the  Rice  Bill  was  pub- 
lished In  Luke  Hansard's  yoiirnal  of  the  House  of  Commons,  and  occupied 
a  space  of  thirteen  pages.  It  may  also  be  regarded  as  the  first  of  the 
Gladstonlan  orations. 


88 


LIKE    AND    TIMES    UE    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE, 


QUEEN    VICTORIA,    1 843. 


RISING    TO    LKADERSillP.  89 


CHAPTER  VI. 

Rising  to  Leadership. 

T  was  reserved  for  the  year  iSt,"/  to  witness  the  transfer  of  the 
British  crown  to  the  head  of  her  who  still  wears  it.  William  IV 
was  gathered  to  his  ancestors  in  the  vaults  of  Windsor.  His- 
tory had  seen  with  astonishment  the  imminent  extinction  of 
the  erstwhile  populous  house  of  Hanover-Brunswick.  The 
great  family  of  George  III  had  virtually  sunk  into  the  earth.  To  him  nine 
sons  had  been  born  ;  two  of  them  had  worn  his  crown.  And  yet  in  June 
of  1837,  when  William  IV  went  down  into  the  valley  of  the  shadow,  not  a 
single  male  child  of  the  legitimate  blood  of  the  English  Guelphs  survived 
to  wear  the  crown!  Edward,  Duke  of  Kent,  fourth  son  of  George  III,  had 
died  in  1825.  To  his  surviving  family,  by  the  established  laws  of  English 
descent,  the  monarchy  must  now  look  for  a  sovereign  ;  and  that  sovereign 
was  found  in  the  person  of  the  Duke  of  Kent's  daughter,  Alexandrina 
Victoria,  to  whom  the  scepter  went  without  the  shadow  of  dispute.  She 
ascended  the  throne  as  the  thirty-fifth  in  order  of  succession  from  William 
the  Conqueror. 

One  of  the  circumstances  of  the  transfer  of  the  crown  was  the  holdinof 
of  a  new  parliamentary  election.  Gladstone  had  now  attracted  the  atten- 
tion of  the  Conservative  party  throughout  the  kingdom.  The  Tories 
recognized  him  as  a  probable  leader  of  the  future.  His  moderate  temper 
they  could  not  well  endure  ;  but  the  man  political  is  not  particular,  if  he  can 
have  a  leader  who  will  conduct  him  to  success.  More  than  one  constitu- 
ency would  now  have  been  glad  to  have  the  member  from  Newark  stand 
as  a  candidate.  He  was,  however,  prudential,  not  to  say  faithful  to  those 
who  had  first  elected  him  to  office.  He  accordingly  offered  himself  to  New- 
ark for  the  third  time. 

The  Tories  of  Manchester  were  anxious  to  secure  the  popular  young 
leader  for  themselves.  Manchester  was  a  Liberal  strono-hold.  For  the 
Tories,  the  way  to  success  there  was  steep-up,  if  not  unscalable.  They 
appointed  a  committee  to  call  on  Gladstone  with  arguments  in  favor  of  his 
representing  Manchester.  He  heard  what  was  to  be  said,  but  declined  the 
offer.  The  modest  certainty  of  Newark  was  better,  according  to  his  cau- 
tious judgment,  than  the  glittering  hypothesis  of  Manchester.  A  report,  how- 
ever, got  abroad  that  the  young  statesman  was  not  only  coquetting  with  the 
anxious  city,  but  had  signified  his  purpose  to  accept  a  candidacy  for  the 
larger  place.  There  appears  to  have  been  no  foundation  for  such  a  rumor - 
other  than  the  call  of  the  Manchester  committee;  but  Mr.  Gladstone,  on 
the    22d    of  July,    1837,    a    month   after   the    accession    of  Victoria,    found 


90 


LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 


RISING    TO    LEADERSHIP.  9I 

occasion  to  publish  in  the  Newark  newspaper  a  formal  contradiction  of  the 
report. 

We  may  note  in  what  he  says  the  prudent,  strongly  political,  and  astute 
temper  of  the  man.  "  My  attention,"  says  he,  "  has  just  been  called  to  a 
paragraph  in  the  Nottingham  and  Newark  Mercury  of  this  morning,  w^hich 
announces  on  the  authority  of  some  person  unknown  that  I  have  consented 
to  be  put  in  nomination  for  Manchester,  and  have  promised  if  elected  to  sit 
in  Parliament  as  its  representative.  I  have  to  inform  you  that  these  state- 
ments are  wholly  without  foundation.  I  was  honored  on  Wednesday  with 
a  deputation  from  Manchester,  empowered  to  request  that  I  would  become 
a  candidate  for  the  borough.  I  felt  the  honor,  but  I  answered  unequivoc- 
ally and  at  once  that  I  must  absolutely  decline  the  invitation  ;  and  I  am 
much  at  a  loss  to  conceive  how  'a  most  respectable  correspondent'  could 
have  cited  language  which  I  never  used  from  a  letter  which  I  never  wrote. 
Lastly,  I  beg  to  state  in  terms  as  explicit  as  I  can  command  that  I  hold 
myself  bound  in  honor  to  the  electors  of  Newark,  that  I  adhere  in  every 
particular  to  the  tenor  of  my  late  address,  and  that  I  place  my  humble 
services  during  the  ensuing  Parliament  entirely  and  unconditionally  at 
their  disposal." 

One  would  think  that  this  clear  and  frank  declination  of  the  Manchester 
proposition  would  have  settled  the  case  ;  but  not  so.  Surprising  as  it  may 
seem,  the  Tory  electors  of  that  city  persisted  in  nominating  Mr.  Gladstone 
and  voting  for  him.  It  is  probable  that  they  felt  that  his  was  a  name  to 
conjure  with,  and  that  in  a  hopeless  political  contest  they  could  keep  the 
Conservative  forces  together  with  the  shibboleth  cf  "  Church  and  State," 
and  the  name  of  Gladstone  as  the  defender  of  the  established  order.  A 
story  got  abroad,  moreover,  that  he  was  a  subscriber  to  the  extent  of  five 
hundred  pounds  to  the  Tory  election  fund  of  Manchester,  on  condition  that 
he  be  returned !  We  do  not  know  whether  this  report  was  or  was  not  well 
founded.  The  probabilities  are  that  Gladstone  subscribed  to  the  Conserv- 
ative fund,  but  that  he  did  not  stipulate  his  election  as  a  condition.  How- 
ever this  may  be,  his  name  was  put  in  nomination  and  formally  seconded 
by  the  Tory  politicians  of  Manchester. 

Mr.  Denison,  one  of  their  number,  made  a  strong  speech  in  Gladstone's 
favor,  setting  him  forth  as  the  able  and  unambiguous  supporter  of  the  union 
of  Church  and  State.  The  Conservatives  of  the  city  knew  themselves  to 
be  in  a  hopeless  minority,  but  they  rallied  and  cast  2,294  votes  for  William 
E.  Gladstone.  The  Hon.  C.  Poulett  Thomson  received  4,155  votes,  and 
Mr.  Mark  Phillips,  3,760.  The  result  showed  an  astonishing  strength 
for  the  Tory  candidate.  He  had  declined  a  nomination.  He  was  nonresi- 
dent. The  manufacturing  city  was  overwhelmingly  Liberal.  The  candi- 
date (if  such   he  were)  never   once  appeared   in   the  borough,  or  gave  the 


92 


LIFE    AND    TIMES    UF    WILLIAM     E.    GLADSTONE. 


COTTON    MILLS,    MANCHESTER. 


slightest  countenance  to  what  was  going  on  ;  and  yet  his  vote  was  so  large 
as  to  be  a  menace  to  the  competitor  just  above  him.  Such  was  the  surpris- 
ing strength  of  the  Gladstone  vote  that  the  Tories  were  jubilant,  and  sent  for 
their  man  to  be  the  guest  at  a  political  dinner  which  they  gave  in  his  honor. 
The  reception  was  held  at  the  Bush  Inn.  In  Gladstone's  speech  at 
the  dinner  he  became  witty.  The  circumstances  had  brought  him  to  full 
feather.  He  was  among  his  friends.  In  the  political  manner  he  congratu- 
lated his  admirers  that  they  had  polled  so  great  a  vote  under  the  banner  of 
so  poor  a  leader.  He  deprecated  the  abuse  to  which  he  had  been  subject, 
when  he  had  in  no  wise  offended  the  Liberals  of  Manchester,  even  by  his 
presence  during  the  canvass.  Then  he  came  to  some  excellent  satire.  "  I 
have  been  told,"  said  he,  "  that  certain  parties  in  Manchester  were  pleased 
to  send  over  to  Newark  a  Radical  candidate  to  oppose  me  in  the  late  elec- 
tion. I  believe  Manchester  receives  annually  from  Newark  a  great  deal  of 
useful  commodities  in  the  shape  of  malt  and  flour ;  and  I  suppose  it  was 
upon  the  principle  of  a  balance  of  trade  that  this  Radical  candidate  was 
sent !  If,  instead  of  sending  back  this  Radical  candidate,  they  had  sent  back 
one  of  their  sacks  of  flour,  they  would  have  sent  back  what  was  nearly  as 
intelligent,  and  much  more  useful  ! " 


RISING    TO    LEADERSHIP.  93 

The  beginnini^s  of  the  ascendency  of  William  E.  Gladstone  in  the 
affairs  of  Great  Britain  were  virtually  coincident  with  the  commencement  of 
the  Victorian  era.  The  career  of  the  statesman  and  the  career  of  the 
queen  whose  government  he  so  largely  influenced,  but  with  whom  he 
was  never  a  popular  or  even  acceptable  agent,  lie  parallel  throughout 
nearly  the  whole  extent  of  this  century.  Under  the  auspices  of  Melbourne 
and  Wellington,  the  young  queen,  modest,  quite  womanly,  conservative,  came 
to  the  throne  in  the  summer  of  1837.  On  the  twentieth  of  the  following 
October  she,  for  the  first  time,  attended  Parliament,  and  opened  the  session 
in  person.  Her  speech  had,  of  course,  been  prepared  by  the  minister.  On 
the  whole  the  beginning  of  the  reign  was  auspicious.  The  young  sovereign 
was  greatly  praised  by  the  Tories,  and  even  the  Radicals  found  some  cause 
of  congratulation  and  hope. 

Legislation,  however,  was  for  the  moment  at  a  standstill.  After  a  short 
session.  Parliament  was  prorogued  for  nearly  three  months.  In  the  mean- 
time the  Canadian  imbroglio  had  continued  to  vex  the  provinces  and  to 
alarm  the  home  government.  When,  in  January  of  1838,  Parliament  was 
reconvened,  Lord  John  Russell  brought  forward  a  measure  proposing  to 
suspend  for  a  season  the  constitution  of  Lower  Canada,  and  pledging  the 
support  of  the  country  to  the  government  in  the  restoration  of  order  in  the 
Canadian  provinces.  Meanwhile,  the  Assembly  of  Quebec  had  sent  Mr. 
Roebuck  as  its  representative  to  the  House  of  Commons  to  present  the  cause 
of  Canada  before  that  tribunal.  In  attempting  to  discharge  his  duty,  he  was 
met  with  a  protest  by  Mr.  Gladstone,  who  objected  to  receiving  anyone  as  a 
representative  of  a  provincial  Assembly.  The  spirit  with  which  the  protestant 
resisted  the  recognition  of  popular  rights  seems  strangely  inconsistent  with  a 
proper  respect  for  human  hberty,  as  the  same  is  now  understood  in  English- 
speaking  countries,  and  equally  inharmonious  with,  the  statesman's  future 
policies. 

An  attempt  was  made  by  the  opponents  of  Lord  John  Russell's  meas- 
ure to  have  it  rejected;  and  on  this  issue  Gladstone  spoke  at  length.  His 
attitude  showed  that  he  might  already  be  regarded  as  a  Conservative  leader 
in  the  House  of  Commons.  He  urged  retrospectively  that  the  act  of  Parlia- 
ment passed  in  1831,  putting  the  Canadian  revenues  into  the  hands  of  the 
provincial  Assembly,  was  responsible  for  the  present  assumptions  and  pre- 
sumptions of  that  body.  To  repeal  the  act  referred  to  would  be  to  undo 
the  evil.  The  administration  of  the  colonial  office  had  recently  been  marked 
with  folly  and  double  dealing.  The  correspondence  of  Lord  Gosford, 
Secretary  for  the  Colonies,  showed  impolicy,  tergiversation,  misrepresenta- 
tion of  fact.  The  colonial  department  was  characterized  as  thoroughly 
incapable.  The  attack  made  by  Gladstone  on  the  ministry  in  this  particular 
w^as  severe,  and  the  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer,  Mr.  Rice,  felt  called  upon 


94  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

to  speak  in  answer.  Nor  does  it  appear  that  his  effort  to  refute  the  argument 
and  denunciation  of  Gladstone  was  very  successful.  Sir  Robert  Peel  spoke 
ironically  of  the  inconsequential  speech  of  the  chancellor,  and  mocked  at 
his  effort  as  a  failure.  The  ministerial  majority,  however,  was  sufficient  to 
carry  through  the  motion  propounded  by  Lord  Russell. 

The  next  wave  of  excitement  in  Pi  rliament  was  the  result  of  a  measure 
proposed  by  Lord  Henry  Brougham  foi  the  abolition  of  the  system  of  Negro 
apprenticeship  in  the  West  Lidies.  To  this  system  we  have  already  referred. 
In  the  retrospect,  it  seems  hardly  justifiable  that  Lord  Brougham  should 
have  brought  up  the  distressing  subject  when  the  question  was  so  near  a 
solution  of  itself.  The  system  of  apprenticeship  of  the  late  slaves  only 
extended  from  the  year  1834,  when  the  Act  of  Emancipation  was  passed,  to 
the  year  1840.  Within  eighteen  months  of  the  time  of  which  we  are  speak- 
ing apprenticeship  would  cease  to  exist.  Nevertheless,  the  rising  humanity 
of  the  age  surged  strongly  through  the  breasts  of  radical  and  progressive 
statesmen,  and  they  could  illy  brook  the  continuance  of  the  virtual  slavery 
of  the  British  Islands  with  the  abuses  to  which  the  system  was  reported  to 
give  rise.  Lord  Brougham  was  not  a  man  to  bear  patiently  what  he  con- 
ceived to  be  a  great  wrong.  Perhaps  he  was  not  unwilling  to  annoy  and 
taunt  those  statesmen  who  had  been  in  the  attitude  of  upholding  the  ancient 
order. 

Stories  of  eross  abuses  and  shockincr  cruelties  done  in  the  W^est  Indies 
had  been  recently  published  in  Great  Britain.  They  were  of  common 
report.  It  was  constantly  alleged  and  repeated  that  the  apprenticeship  of  the 
Negroes  in  the  six-year  interim  was  as  vile  in  its  abuse  and  injustice  as  the 
system  of  actual  slavery.  Lord  Brougham,  supported  by  Dr.  Stephen 
Lushington  and  other  Radical  members  of  Parliament,  pressed  his  motion 
for  the  immediate  abolition  of  apprenticeship.  This  was  done  strangely 
enough  in  the  House  of  Lords;  but  the  echo  of  the  movement  was  imme- 
diately heard  in  the  Commons,  where,  on  the  29th  of  March,  1838,  Sir 
George  Strickland  offered  a  resolution  virtually  concurrent  with  that  of  Lord 
Brougham. 

<_> 

On  this  question  Gladstone  made  the  longest  and  perhaps  the  strongest 
speech  which  he  had  ever  yet  delivered.  It  was  longest  as  matter  of  fact, 
and  strongest  in  the  ability  displayed  to  array  the  somewhat  shattered  logis- 
tics of  the  past  in  the  support  of  conservatism.  Clearly  the  speaker  was 
sensitive  from  personal  considerations  on  the  subject  of  the  slave  system 
and  apprentice  system  in  the  West  Indies.  The  fine  estate  of  his  father, 
who  was  now  approaching  the  end  of  his  life,  had  been  built  up  by  means 
of  slave  labor  in  the  West  Indian  plantations — not  wholly  so,  but  in  large 
measure.  It  was  easy,  therefore,  to  taunt  the  distinguished  son  with  the 
intimation  that  his  own  properties  and  worldly  fortunes,  both  actual  and  in 


RISING    TO    LEADERSHIP.  95 

expectancy,  were  poisoned  throughout  with  the  injustice  and  cruelties  of 
human  servitude. 

It  must  be  acknowledged  that  William  E.  Gladstone  was  always  a  man 
of  honor.  This  is  said  aside  from  those  political  turnings  and  expedients  with 
which  his  long  public  career  was  marked.  It  was  therefore  to  him  a  burning 
matter  to  have  the  insinuation  of  Hishonesty  and  inhumanity  applied  to 
those  methods  by  which  his  wealth  nad  been  acquired.  He  spoke  power- 
fully against  the  motion  of  Sir  George  Strickland  for  immediate  emancipa- 
tion. He  referred  to  the  generosity  which  the  West  Indian  slaveholders 
had  shown  when  the  Act  of  Emancipation  was  passed.  They,  as  well  as 
the  Liberals  and  agitators,  had  assented  to  the  humane  measure  by  which 
slavery  was  done  away.  The  slaveholders  had  themselves  acknowledged 
and  contributed  to  rectify  the  abuse  and  wrong  of  human  servitude.  They, 
the  slaveholders,  were  glad  that  the  system  of  enforced  Negro  labor  had 
ceased  to  exist.  They  had  accepted  for  their  losses  the  compensation 
which  was  tendered  by  government  as  a  compromise.  It  should  be  con- 
ceded that  If  the  slaveholders  had  sought  to  perpetuate  slavery  under  a 
false  guise,  then  they  should  be  denounced,  pilloried  by  public  opinion, 
handed  over  to  future  ignominy.  But  this  was  not  so.  The  greater  number 
of  the  ex-slaveholders  had  not  desired  covertly  to  perpetuate  the  system 
of  servitude.  Apprenticeship  was  only  an  intermediary  expedient,  which 
must  soon  pass  away  by  its  own  limitation.  The  stories  in  circulation  upon 
which  honorable  members  were  basing  their  present  attack  were  slanders 
and  not  truths.  These  slanders  affected  the  character  of  a  reputable  and 
highly  honorable  class  of  Englishmen. 

The  speaker  then  broke  out  in  what  was  for  him  a  passionate  appeal. 
His  outburst  was  personal  and  almost  angry.  "  O,  sir,"  said  he,  "  with  what 
depth  of  desire  have  I  longed  for  this  day  !  Sore  and  wearied  and  irritated, 
perhaps,  with  the  grossly  exaggerated  misrepresentations  and  with  the  utter 
calumnies  that  have  been  in  circulation  without  the  means  of  reply,  how 
do  I  rejoice  to  meet  them  in  free  discussion  before  the  face  of  the  British 
Parliament !  And  I  earnestly  wish  that  I  may  be  enabled  to  avoid  all 
language  and  sentiments  similar  to  those  I  have  reprobated  in  others.  The 
character  of  the  planters  is  at  stake  in  this  controversy.  They  have  been 
attacked  on  both  moral  and  pecuniary  grounds.  Apprenticeship— as  Lord 
Stanley  has  distinctly  stated  when  introducing  the  measure  before  the 
House — was  a  part  of  the  compensation.  Negro  labor  had  a  marketable 
value,  and  it  would  be  unjust  to  those  who  had  a  right  in  it  to  deprive  them 
of  It.  The  House  has  recognized  and  assented  to  this  right  as  far  as  the 
year  1840,  and  is  thus  morally  bound  to  fulfill  its  compact.  The  committee 
presided  over  by  Mr.  Buxton  has  investigated  the  system  of  apprenticeship, 
and  has  reported  against  the  necessity  for  the  proposed  change." 


96  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

The  speaker  proceeded  once  more  to  canvass  at  great  length  the  indus- 
trial condition  in  the  West  Indies.  He  showed  that  the  relations  between 
the  planters  and  the  Negroes  who  had  been  their  slaves  were  amicable  and, 
on  the  whole,  satisfactory.  Whatever  cruelties  may  have  existed  they  were 
in  process  of  extinction.  The  system  of  apprenticeship  was  not  slavery, 
and  was  not  marked  with  the  abuses  that  had  characterized  human  bondasfe. 
The  stories  which  had  been  circulated  and  printed  in  Great  Britain  were 
exaggerations  drawn  from  individual  instances  of  hardship  and  abuse.  The 
evils  attendant  upon  apprenticeship  were  not  general,  but  only  local  and 
peculiar.  Statistics  did  not  warrant  the  allegations  of  the  gentlemen  who 
support,  Sir  George  Strickland's  motion.  If  the  lash  had  been  used  by 
West  Indian  overseers,  that  was  a  cruelty  which  was  rapidly  passing  away. 
The  history  of  British  Guiana  showed  that  the  whipping  of  slaves  had 
virtually  ceased,  and  would  cease  of  itself.  In  a  population  of  fully  seven 
thousand  there  had  only  been,  in  that  country,  eleven  cases  of  whipping  in 
the  five  preceding  months.  Even  these  cases  of  the  use  of  the  lash  were 
justified,  or  at  least  excused,  on  the  ground  that  the  punishment  was  for 
theft,  for  crime,  and  w^as  not  the  real  slave-whipping  that  had  existed 
formerly. 

Besides,  the  advocates  of  the  measure  before  the  House  were  involved 
in  the  grossest  inconsistency.  They  who  were  supporting  the  proposed 
measure  of  Sir  George  Strickland  could  not  wait  for  two  years  until  the 
system  of  apprenticeship  would  expire  by  its  own  limitation,  but  they  could 
patronize  without  compunction  the  horrid  system  of  African  slavery  in 
America.  For  that  system  the  responsibility  rested  on  British  statesman- 
ship. In  America  there  were  three  millions  of  slaves,  and  Great  Britain,  by 
the  purchase  of  American  cotton  for  use  in  the  industrial  cities,  was  patron- 
izing and  supporting  a  slavery  that  had  no  alleviation.  It  was  grossly 
inconsistent  in  Radical  leaders  thus  to  shore  up  human  bondage  in  America, 
and  to  turn  about  and  attack  the  mild  and  humane  system  of  apprentice- 
ship in  the  West  Indies. 

In  America,  the  speaker  continued,  there  was  no  hint  of  abolition. 
Slavery  in  that  country  was  unmitigated.  It  had  become  a  part  of  the 
domestic  condition  in  a  large  portion  of  the  American  States.  It  bade  fair 
to  be  an  everlasting  institution.  In  1837  the  British  dealers,  represented 
by  agitators  in  Parliament,  had  consumed  forty-five  million  pounds  of  cotton 
produced  by  free  labor,  and  three  hundred  and  eighteen  million  pounds 
produced  by  slave  labor  !  This,  too,  at  a  time  when  India  afforded  a  field  for 
the  production  of  cotton  with  free  labor  at  cheaper  rates  than  could  be  had 
in  America.  "  If,  sir,"  the  speaker  continued,  "  the  complaints  against  the 
general  body  of  the  West  Indies  had  been  substantiated,  I  should  have 
deemed  it  an   unworthy  artifice  to   attempt  diverting  the   attention   of  the 


RISING    TO    LEADERSHIP.  97 

House  from  the  question  immediately  at  issue  by  merely  proving  that  other 
delinquencies  existed  in  other  quarters  ;  but,  feeling  as  I  do  that  those 
charges  have  been  overthrown  in  debate,  I  think  myself  entitled  and  bound 
to  show  how  capricious  are  honorable  gentlemen  in  the  distribution  of  their 
sympathies  among  those  different  objects  which  call  for  their  application." 

In  this  case  the  speaker  claimed  to  urge  only  justice.  The  House  of 
Commons  could  not  be  indifferent  to  the  call  for  justice.  Notwithstanding 
the  fact  that  the  speaker  was  in  opposition,  notwithstanding  the  fact  that 
he  appeared  as  an  apologist  only,  proposing  nothing  in  the  way  of  progress, 
such  was  the  vigor  of  his  address  and  the  dilemma  in  which  he  placed  the 
patrons  of  American  slavery  illogically  attacking  the  system  of  apprentice- 
ship, certainly  a  lesser  evil,  that  the  resolution  of  Strickland  was  beaten  on 
an  open  division  of  the  House.  The  London  Times,  then  as  ever  the 
organ  of  the  government,  found  occasion  to  speak  in  high  compliment  of 
the  speech  of  Gladstone  from  both  a  political  and  an  oratorical  point  of 
view.  The  address  was  published  in  full  in  Hansard's  Journal  of  the  House 
of  Commons,  occupying  thirty-three  columns  of  that  publication.  It  was 
also  quoted  with  delight  by  the  Conservative  papers  and  summarized  with 
little  condemnation  by  the  Liberal  journals  of  the  time.  Certainly  the 
speech  did  not  go  to  the  root  of  the  matter.  It  did  not  look  down  into  the 
ultimate  character  of  all  slavery  and  all  semislavery  whatsoever  ;  but,  taking 
— as  Gladstone  was  ever  disposed  to  take — the  existing  condition  as  the 
point  of  departure,  he  argued  out  of  that  most  strongly  and  successfully 
against  the  proposals  of  Lord  Brougham  and  Sir  George  Strickland,  gaining 
for  himself  and  for  his  successful  effort  a  well-deserved  increment  of  repu- 
tation as  a  parliamentarian  and  rising  statesman  ;  this,  too,  in  the  tace  of 
the  fact  that  the  abuses  complained  of  in  the  islands  of  Demerara,  Trini- 
dad, and  Jamaica  were,  on  the  whole,  founded  in  fact.  The  great  point  was 
that  the  government  had  promised  the  slaveholders  a  period  of  six  years 
of  that  apprenticeship  of  the  Negroes  which  stood  in  the  place  of  the 
former  slavery.  To  this  they  were  entitled,  as  well  as  to  the  twenty  millions 
sterling  which  had  been  given  them  in  compensation  for  their  human 
chattels. 

We  might  make  the  episode  just  recited,  happening  in  the  spring  of  1838, 
the  date  of  the  national  reputation  and  rising  influence  of  W.  E.  Gladstone 
in  the  House  of  Commons.  It  was  now  manifest  that  an  able,  cautious,  and 
withal  patriotic,  though  strongly  conservative,  young  parliamentary  leader 
had  appeared,  from  whom  much  might  be  expected  for  the  future.  Barnett 
Smith,  in  his  Life  of  Gladstone,  has  repeated  from  a  book  called  the  British 
Senate  in  1838,  a  paragraph  in  which  the  able  author  of  that  work,  though 
often  erroneous  in  statements  of  fact,  happily  sketches  the  character  and 
position  of  the  member  from  Newark  at  the  period  indicated. 
7 


98  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

"  Mr.  Gladstone,"  says  he,  "  is  one  of  the  most  risuig  young  men  on  the 
Tory  side  of  the  House.  His  party  expect  great  things  from  him;  and  cer- 
tainly, when  it  is  remembered  that  his  age  is  only  thirty-five  [!]  the  success 
of  the  parliamentary  efforts  he  has  already  made  justifies  their  expectations. 
He  is  well  informed  on  most  of  the  subjects  which  usually  occupy  the 
attention  of  the  Legislature  ;  and  he  is  happy  in  turning  his  information  to 
good  account.  He  is  ready  on  all  occasions  which  he  deems  fitting  ones 
with  a  speech  in  favor  of  the  policy  advocated  by  the  party  with  whom  he 
acts.  His  extempore  resources  are  ample.  Few  men  in  the  House  can 
improvise  better.  It  does  not  appear  to  cost  him  an  effort  to  speak.  He  is 
a  man  of  very  considerable  talent,  but  has  nothing  approaching  to  genius. 
His  abilities  are  much  more  the  result  of  an  excellent  education  and  of 
mature  study  than  of  any  prodigality  of  nature  in  the  distribution  of  her  mental 
gifts.  I  have  no  idea  that  he  will  ever  acquire  the  reputation  of  a  great 
statesman.  His  views  are  not  sufiiciently  profound  or  enlarged  for  that; 
his  celebrity  in  the  House  of  Commons  will  chiefly  depend  on  his  readiness 
and  dexterity  as  a  debater,  in  conjunction  with  the  excellence  of  his  elocu- 
tion and  the  gracefulness  of  his  manner  when  speaking." 

Such  contemporaneous  criticisms  as  that  just  cited  are  always  interest- 
ing in  the  retrospect — and  frequently  amusing.  We  may  well  wonder  how 
the  author  of  the  same  could  make  a  gentleman  to  be  "  only  thirty-five  "  in 
the  year  1838,  who  was  born  in  December  of  1809  !  To  the  average  arith- 
metician, skilled  only  in  the  vulgar  subtraction  of  numbers,  it  would  appear 
that  Mr.  Gladstone  at  this  time  was  not  yet  thirty,  or  even  quite  twenty- 
nine  years  of  age.  And  withal,  five  years  at  this  period  of  a  man's  life  are 
worth  counting !  As  to  the  prophetical  part,  that  Gladstone  could  never 
acquire  the  reputation  of  statesman,  and  that  he  was  more  dependent  on 
excellence  of  elocution  than  on  any  enlarged  or  profound  views  of  state  policy, 
that  is  fairly  good  ! 

The  same  author  from  whom  we  have  quoted  is  more  to  the  point  in 
speaking  of  Gladstone's  style,  and  of  his  ability  in  m^s  celare  arteiu.  "  His 
style,"  says  he,  "is  polished,  but  has  no  appearance  of  the  effect  of  previous 
preparation.  He  displays  considerable  acuteness  in  replying  to  an  oppo- 
nent ;  he  is  quick  in  his  perception  of  anything  vulnerable  in  the  speech  to 
which  he  replies,  and  happy  in  laying  the  weak  point  bare  to  the  gaze  of 
the  House.  He  now  and  then  indulges  in  sarcasm,  which  is  in  most  cases 
very  felicitous.  He  is  plausible  even  when  most  in  error.  When  it  suits 
himself  or  his  party,  he  can  apply  himself  with  the  strictest  closeness  to  the 
real  point  at  issue ;  when  to  evade  the  point  is  deemed  most  politic,  no  man 
can  wander  from  it  more  widely."  And  the  critic  might  have  added  more 
gracefully  or  classically  ! 

In  the  next  place  the  author  of  The  DritisJi  Senate  in  1838  goes  on  to 


RISING    TO    LEADERSHIP.  99 

speak  of  the  person  and  habit  of  the  man,  "  Mr.  Gladstone's  appearance," 
says  he,  "  and  manners  are  much  in  his  favor.  He  is  a  fine-looking  man. 
He  is  about  the  usual  height  and  of  good  figure.  His  countenance  is  mild 
and  pleasant,  and  has  a  highly  intellectual  expression.  His  eyes  are  clear 
and  quick.  His  eyebrows  are  dark  and  rather  prominent.  There  is  not  a 
dandy  in  the  House  but  envies  what  Truefit  would  call  his  'fine  head  of  jet- 
black  hain'  It  is  always  carefully  parted  from  the  crown  downward  to 
his  brow,  where  it  was  tastefully  shaded.  His  features  are  small  and  regu- 
lar [mirabile  dictii  !\  and  his  complexion  must  be  a  very  unworthy  witness 
if  he  does  not  possess  an  abundant  stock  of  health. 

"  Mr.  Gladstone's  gesture  is  varied  but  not  violent.  When  he  rises  he 
generally  puts  both  his  hands  behind  his  back  ;  and  having  there  suffered 
them  to  embrace  each  other  for  a  short  time  he  unclasps  them,  and  allows 
them  to  drop  on  either  side.  They  are  not  permitted  to  remain  long  In 
that  locality  before  you  see  them  again  closed  together  and  hanging  down 
before  him.  Their  reunion  Is  not  suffered  to  last  for  any  length  of  time. 
Again  a  separation  takes  place,  and  now  the  right  hand  Is  seen  moving  up 
and  down  before  him.  Having  thus  exercised  It  a  little,  he  thrusts  it  Into 
the  pocket  of  his  coat,  and  then  orders  the  left  hand  to  follow  its  example. 
Having  granted  them  a  momentary  repose  there,  they  are  again  put  into 
gentle  motion  ;  and  in  a  few  seconds  they  are  seen  reposing  vis  a  vis  on  his 
breast.  He  moves  his  face  and  body  from  one  direction  to  another,  not  for- 
getting to  bestow  a  liberal  share  of  his  attention  on  his  own  party.  He  Is 
always  listened  to  with  much  attention  by  the  House,  and  appears  to  be 
highly  respected  by  men  of  all  parties.  He  is  a  man  of  good  business 
habits  ;  of  this  he  furnished  abundant  proof  when  Undersecretary  for  the 
Colonies,  during  the  short-lived  administration  of  Sir  Robert  Peel." 

We  may  now  notice  the  remaining  parliamentary  history  of  Mr.  Glad- 
stone during  the  years  1839-40.  Notwithstanding  the  fact  that  with  the 
last-named  year  the  remaining  vestiges  of  Negro  slavery  in  the  West  Indies 
would  cease,  the  agitation  in  the  House  of  Commons  relative  to  the  indus- 
trial condition  In  those  islands  still  continued.  The  animosity  rose  so  high 
that  at  one  time  Sir  Stephen  Lushington  Introduced  a  bill  from  the  side  of 
the  government  for  the  suspension  of  the  Jamaican  Constitution.  The 
measure  was  sufficiently  radical  and  severe.  As  might  be  expected,  Glad- 
stone opposed  it  with  all  his  might.  He  went  again  through  the  same  argu- 
ments that  he  had  now  traversed  more  than  once  with  respect  to  the  rela- 
tions to  the  ex-slaves  and  ex-masters  of  the  British  West  Indies.  More  par- 
ticularly, he  urged  that  the  Lushington  Bill  was  in  violation  of  faith.  It 
would  undo  those  conditions  upon  which  a  settlement  In  Jamaica  had  been 
effected.  It  was  like  a  proposition  to  violate  a  contract  after  the  fact.  The 
passage  of  such  a  bill  would  be  a  notice  to  the  colonial  subjects  of  Great 


lOO  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

Britain  that  they  could  not  any  longer  depend  on  the  good  faith  of  the 
House  of  Commons. 

At  this  time  began  the  agitation  in  England  for  a  better  system  of 
public  education,  A  proposition  was  made  to  constitute  an  Educational 
Board  for  the  United  Kingdom  in  connection  with  the  privy  council. 
The  measure  had  the  support  of  George  William  Frederick  Howard  (Vis- 
count Morpeth),  at  that  time  Chief  Secretary  for  Ireland.  It  was  opposed 
by  Lord  Stanley,  who  on  the  14th  of  June,  1839,  spoke  long  and  almost 
angrily  against  the  so-called  National  Education  Bill.  He  insisted  in  a 
motion  that  her  majesty  be  requested  to  rescind  that  Order  in  Council  by 
which  the  Educational  Board  was  to  be  constituted. 

Every  proposition  of  the  kind  now  before  the  House  was  calculated  to 
awaken  the  deep-seated  religious  prejudices  of  Great  Britain.  The  interests 
of  the  Established  Church  and  the  interest  of  Irish  Catholicism  could 
hardly  be  made  to  consist.  The  larger  interest  of  secular  society — inde- 
pendent alike  of  the  one  and  of  the  other — was  sacrificed  once  and  again 
to  the  powerful  prejudices  of  religion.  Nearly  every  speaker  approached 
the  question  from  the  angle  of  his  own  establishment.  It  seemed  impos- 
sible to  please  everybody  with  anything.  Lord  Morpeth  spoke  in  favor  of 
the  proposed  bill.  He  made  the  argument  that  the  government  of  Great 
Britain  was  in  the  habit  of  employing  for  national  purposes,  such  as  war,  all 
classes  of  subjects,  without  respect  to  religious  qualifications.  Government 
did  not  hesitate  to  lay  its  hand  on  Roman  Catholics  and  Nonconformists, 
as  well  as  on  adherents  of  the  Church  of  England.  Government  did  not 
forbear  to  take  in  taxation  the  property  of  all  alike.  Therefore  all  should 
be  treated  alike  in  the  matter  of  public  education.  If  the  government  made 
soldiers  out  of  young  Roman  Catholics  and  took  the  gold  of  Nonconform- 
ists without  asking  leave  of  religious  prejudice,  then  the  government  could 
hardly  refuse  the  advantages  of  education  to  all  subjects  without  partiality 
or  prejudice. 

It  is  probable,  indeed  certain,  that  the  trend  of  the  debate  was  in  part 
determined  by  the  postulates  and  arguments  of  Mr.  Gladstone's  recent  book 
on  The  State  in  its  Relations  zvith  the  Church ;  for  that  work  had  now 
been  published,  and  was  matter  of  comment  in  religious  circles  and  in  the 
high  places  of  statesmanship.  In  course  of  the  debate,  some  of  the  speak- 
ers, such  as  Daniel  O'Connell  and  Lord  Ashley,  referred  to  Mr.  Gladstone's 
work,  criticising  favorably  or  adversely  the  tenets  of  that  treatise.  This 
was  precisely  to  the  author's  hand  and  mind.  It  gave  opportunity  to  him 
to  reply  to  the  defenders  of  the  ministerial  project.  His  speech  was  lev- 
eled in  particular  against  Lord  John  Russell  and  Lord  Morpeth.  The 
speaker  did  not  hesitate  to  avow  and  defend  the  doctrines  of  his  book. 
He  would  support  that  thesis  In  both  theory  and  practice.     The  principles 


RISING    TO    LEADERSHIP. 


lOI 


of  his  work  on  Church  and  State  might  well  be  compared  with  the  prin- 
ciples of  Lord  John  Russell,  particularly  in  the  results  that  flowed  naturally 
therefrom.  The  principles  which  he  had  espoused  might  well  be  judged 
from  an  examination  of  the  institutions  of  the  three  parts  of  the  home 
empire  of  Great  Britain.  The  establishment  of  England  would  show  prac- 
tically the  value  of  his  doctrine.     Scotland  and  Ireland  would  also  furnish 


DANIEL   O  CONNELL. 


a  lesson.  He  animadverted  upon  the  statistics  which  O'Connell  had  intro- 
duced into  his  speech,  remarking  wittily  that  that  orator  reminded  him  of 
a  remark  made  by  George  Canning,  to  the  effect  that  he  had  a  great  aver- 
sion to  hearing  a  fact  in  debate,  but  a  still  greater  repugnance  to  figures! 

Gladstone  insisted  that  O'Connell  was  inaccurate  in  his  alleged  statis- 
tics.    He  then  turned  to   Lord  Morpeth's  contention  that  the  State  ought 


I02  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

to  provide  education  for  the  Nonconformists  because  "it  fingered  their 
gold."  In  reply  to  this  the  speaker  said  that  if  the  State  of  England  had 
no  other  function  than  that  of  expressing  the  will  of  the  people  on  religious 
doctrines,  he  might  admit  the  truth  of  Morpeth's  saying.  On  the  other 
hand,  if  the  State  should  be  regarded  as  an  entity  and  moral  person  having 
duties  to  perform,  a  conscience  to  obey,  and  by  consequence  a  system  of 
religion  to  uphold,  then  indeed  the  case  was  different.  Certainly  it  was  not 
the  business  of  a  representative  in  the  House  to  revile  any  form  of  religion; 
but  Christianity,  expressed  in  the  episcopal  establishment,  was  the  religion 
of  the  State.  The  measure  proposed  was  sweeping  in  its  provisions.  It 
took  in  every  mongrel  variety  of  human  thought  and  doctrine.  If  the 
bill  should  become  a  law,  then  the  Jews  would  have  a  right  to  public 
education. 

How  could  this  thing  be?  A  recent  petition  sent  to  the  House  had 
expressed  to  the  queen  the  profound  gratitude  of  the  nation  along  with 
the  wish  that  the  youth  of  the  country  should  be  religiously  trained,  and 
the  rights  of  conscience  be  respected  for  all.  The  petitioners  expressed  the 
hope  that  both  Jew  and  Christian  might  be  educated  "  with  a  due  regard  to 
the  Holy  Scriptures."  How  could  the  Jew,  who  rejected  the  New  Testa- 
ment, be  educated  at  public  charge  "with  due  regard  to  the  Holy  Scrip- 
tures,'*" If  the  Jews  were  to  be  educated  at  public  charge  as  w^ell  as 
Christians,  then  the  children  of  the  Jews  would  have  to  be  indoctrinated 
with  the  reading  of  the  New  Testament — a  thing  intolerable  to  the  Hebrew 
understanding  and  conscience.  The  measure  was  therefore  contradictory 
and  absurd.  The  speaker  would  not  require  any  child  of  England  to  be 
indoctrinated  with  principles  contrary  to  the  religion  of  his  fathers.  But 
this  forbade  the  education  of  such  children  at  the  expense  of  the  State. 
The  whole  speech  was  an  excellent  example  of  the  conflict  of  the  Aristo- 
telian logic,  with  all  its  bloodless  and  inhuman  bones,  against  that  humane 
and  civilizing  fact  called  history.  Mr.  Gladstone  succeeded  by  his  debate 
in  reducing  the  governmental  majority  on  the  Education  Bill,  which  was 
nevertheless  passed  over  the  Conservative  protest. 

This  was  the  age  in  British  politics  when  many  of  the  humane  ques- 
tions that  have  filled  up  so  large  a  part  of  the  annals  of  the  empire  in  this 
century  were  beginning  to  take  form.  The  question  of  the  Jews  as  possible 
participants  in  the  benefits  of  the  new  statute  of  education  widened  into  an 
agitation  for  removing  from  the  long-oppressed  race  the  legal  discrimina- 
tions to  which  they  had  been  subjected.  Late  in  the  session  of  1839  ^  bill 
was  brought  into  the  House  for  the  removal  of  the  civil  disabilities  of  the 
Jews.  The  Liberals — including  the  residue  of  Whig  statesmen — and  the^ 
Radicals  of  the  House  were  favorable  to  the  proposed  measure.  The 
Conservatives,  however,  were  strongly  agitated  against  it.     Mr.  Gladstone 


RISING    TO    LEADERSHir.  IO3 

was  amonf^  the  number  who  deprecated  the  revocation  of  the  anti-Jewish 
statutes.  He  spoke  against  the  Removal  Bill,  and  in  so  doing  was  con- 
fronted and  worsted  not  a  little  by  the  brilliant  Thomas  Babington 
Macaulay,  whose  speech  on  the  occasion  was  as  humane  and  logical  as  it 
was  eloquent  and  ornate. 

It  could  hardly  be  doubted  that  at  this  time  Macaulay  was  the  greatest 
debater  in  the  Commons.  His  speech,  when  inspired  with  the  passionate 
sense  of  justice  and  human  right,  moved  like  a  storm  through  the  forest; 
nothing  could  withstand  it.  He  was  nine  .years  the  senior  of  Gladstone, 
and  had  the  advantage  of  a  profounder  scholarship,  extending  into  every 
field  of  the  humanities,  a  more  vivid  imagination,  less  prudence,  and  greater 
audacity.  The  bill  for  the  removal  of  Jewish  disabilities  was  passed  through 
the  House  of  Commons,  but  rejected  by  the  Lords.  It  was  much  that 
Mr.  Gladstone,  who  had  not  yet  completed  his  thirtieth  year,  should  be 
matched  in  any  measure  of  honorable  competition  with  the  most  brilliant 
speaker  and  writer  of  the  times. 

In  the  following  session  Parliament  was  agitated  with  the  Chinese 
question.  Great  Britain  had  begun  her  nefarious  commerce  in  opium  with 
the  merchants  of  the  Chinese  ports.  The"  authorities  of  the  celestial 
empire  were  striving  in  a  weak  and  desultory  way  to  inhibit  the  wicked  and 
corrupting  trade.  There  was  an  interruption  of  intercourse  between  Great 
Britain  and  China,  and  afterward  some  overt  acts  of  hostility.  In  the  ses- 
sion of  1840  Sir  James  Graham  introduced  a  declarative  resolution  that  the 
difficulties  with  the  Orient  were  referable  to  the  mismanag^ement  of  the  min- 
istry  respecting  the  relations  of  Great  Britain  with  China,  and  in  particular 
to  the  fact  that  the  superintendent  of  British  interests  at  Canton  had  not 
been  furnished  with  adequate  instructions  relative  to  the  then  contraband 
trade  in  opium.  It  was  a  measure  of  the  opposition  intended  to  weaken 
the  influence  of  the  government. 

The  purpose  of  the  supporters  of  the  proposition  was  to  show  that 
Great  Britain  had  been  to  blame  in  the  antecedents  of  the  difficulty,  and 
would  be  still  more  to  blame  in  makinof  war  on  the  Chinese.  This  was  the 
position  taken  by  Gladstone.  In  his  speech  he  reverted  to  what  Macaulay 
had  said  against  the  resolution  of  Sir  James  Graham.  It  shows  us  the 
decree  of  his  courage  that  he  was  not  unwillinpf  to  measure  swords  with  so 
great  an  antagonist.  "  The  right  honorable  gentleman  opposite,"  said  Mr. 
Gladstone,  "  spoke  last  night  in  eloquent  terms  of  the  British  flag  waving 
in  glory  at  Canton,  and  of  the  animating  effects  produced  on  the  minds  of 
our  sailors  by  the  knowledge  that  in  no  country  under  heaven  was  it  per- 
mitted to  be  insulted.  But  how  comes  it  to  pass  that  the  sight  of  that  flag 
always  raises  the  spirit  of  Englishmen  ?  It  is  because  it  has  always  been 
associated   with  the   cause  of  justice,  with    opposition  to  oppression,  with 


104  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

respect  to  national  rights,  with  honorable  commercial  enterprise  ;  but  now 
under  the  auspices  of  the  noble  Lord  that  Hag  is  hoisted  to  protect  an 
infamous  contraband  traffic,  and  if  it  were  never  to  be  hoisted  except  as  it 
is  now  hoisted  on  the  coast  of  China  we  should  recoil  from  its  sight  with 
horror,  and  should  never  again  feel  our  hearts  thrill  as  they  now  thrill  with 
emotion  when  it  floats  proudly  and  magnificently  on  the  breeze." 

This  was  an  instance  in  which  Gladstone,  though  a  Conservative,  was 
favored  by  the  elements  in  the  question  under  debate.  We  think  we  per- 
ceive in  his  oratorical  outburst  an  enthusiasm  which  had  been  impossible  if 
the  speaker  had  not  discerned  the  degrading  use  to  which  the  British  flag 
was  put  in  protecting  the  contraband  trade  in  opium.  The  fire  of  the  address 
hints  at  the  great  conflagration  that  may  hereafter  arise  when  national  injus- 
tice shall  furnish  to  the  statesman,  under  inverted  political  conditions,  a  true 
theme  of  oratory  and  denunciation. 

The  vote  for  Sir  J.  Graham's  antiministerial  resolution  was  so  strong 
as  almost  to  prevail  over  the  government.  Only  five  votes  were  wanting  to 
such  a  result.  Meanwhile  the  Melbourne  ministry  became  more  and  more 
unpopular.  The  Nonconformists  in  England  were  dissatisfied  with  it,  and 
still  more  were  the  Irish  Catholics.  The  sentiment  increased  in  1840—41, 
and  with  the  next  session  of  Parliament  it  was  manifest  that  the  ministry 
would  be  overthrown.  In  the  interim  a  deficit  of  two  and  a  half  millions 
sterling  had  appeared  in  the  revenue.  The  Conservatives  grew  more  and 
more  aggressive.  On  the  27th  of  May,  Sir  Robert  Peel,  leader  of  the  oppo- 
sition, offered  a  resolution  in  the  Commons  of  a  want  of  confidence  in  the 
ministry.  A  long  and  heated  debate  ensued,  at  the  end  of  which  the  gov- 
ernment was  beaten  on  a  full  House,  by  a  majority  of  one  vote. 

Lord  John  Russell,  speaking  for  the  ministry,  announced  the  dissolu- 
tion of  Parliament  and  an  appeal  to  the  countr}^  On  the  22d  of  June  the 
session  ended  in  great  confusion,  and  the  parties  threw  themselves  into  the 
political  canvass.  In  the  elections  that  ensued  the  Conservatives  made  a 
net  gain  of  forty  seats  in  the  House.  Many  of  the  most  able  Liberals  were 
beaten  for  reelection.  Gladstone  came  back  from  Newark  with  a  greater 
vote  than  ever.  The  Liberals  went  to  the  wall.  When  the  House  con- 
vened, in  August  of  1 841,  the  government  was  beaten  on  the  address  by  a 
majority  of  ninety-one.  Lord  Melbourne  went  out,  and  Sir  Robert  Peel 
was  summoned  to  construct  a  new  ministry.  In  the  formation  of  this  Mr. 
Gladstone  was  remembered.  He  received  the  appointment  of  Vice  President 
of  the  Board  of  Trade  and  Master  of  the  Mint.  His  constituency  of  Newark 
readily  approved  his  appointment,  and  he  became  a  prominent  member  in 
the  second  ministry  of  Sir  Robert  Peel. 


markiagp:  and  first  appearance  in  literature. 


105 


CHAPTER  VII. 
Marriage  and  First  Appearance  in  Literature. 

N  the  second  chapter  of  this  work  we  traced  to  a  certain  extent 
Mr.  Gladstone's  ancestry  and  family  development.  In  the 
present  connection  we  revert  again  to  personal  history,  and 
in  particular  present  a  notice  of  his  marriage,  the  establish- 
ment of  his  own  family,  and  the  status  of  that  family  in  the 
last  years  of  the  statesman's  life. 

In  1839  ^^'  Gladstone  took  in  marriage  Miss  Catherine  Glynne, 
daughter  of  Sir  Stephen  Richard  Glynne.  With  her  came  the  now  cele- 
brated Hawarden  Castle,  in  Flintshire.  Here  the  statesman  virtually  spent, 
his  life  with  his  growing  family,  but  occupied  during  the  greater  part  with 
his  public  duties  at  London.  The  home  of  the  Gladstones  became  famous 
as  the  head  of  it  rose  to  distinction  and  world-wide  reputation. 

The  Hawarden  estate  has  a  history  which,  as  events  have  determined, 
the  English-speaking  race  is  not  likely  to  let  die.  The  traditional  accounts 
of  Hawarden  go  back  to  the  times  of  the  Commonwealth,  and  then  by  another 
stage  to  the  middle  of  the  fifteenth  century.  It  seems  first  to  have  belonged, 
in  the  reign  of  Henry  VI,  to  Sir  Thomas  Stanley,  one  of  the  officers  of  the 
crown.  Then  it  passed  to  the  Derbys,  with  whom  it  remained  until  James, 
Earl  of  Derby,  was  beheaded  for  royalism  in  1651.  With  this  event  the 
estate  went  to  Sergeant  Glynne,  to  whom  it  was  sold  as  a  sequestered  prop- 
erty. Nine  years  afterward,  with  the  restoration  of  the  House  of  Stuart,  the 
heir  of  the  Derbys  was  about  to  reclaim  Hawarden;  but  Sergeant  Glynne 
purchased  whatever  rights  Charles,  Earl  of  Derby,  may  have  had,  and  the 
estate  remained  to  the  Glynnes,  Sir  William  Glynne  obtaining  it  in  1665. 
During  the  wars  of  the  Commonwealth,  the  Royalists  ^and  the  Republicans 
had  the  place  by  turns;  but  the  Derbys  never  reoccupied  Hawarden  after 
the  revolution. 

As  to  the  Glynne  family,  that  came  out  of  Wales.  The  name  seems  to 
be  taken  from  Gfy7i  Llyvon,  in  Carnarvonshire.  The  father  of  Sergeant 
Glynne,  who  obtained  Hawarden  in  165  i,  was  a  knight,  who  became  a  chief 
justice.  One  of  his  sons  w^as  a  parliamentarian  and  a  baronet.  In  1727 
Sir  Stephen  Glynne,  second  baronet  of  the  name,  built  a  house  at  Hawarden, 
Afterward  Sir  John  Glynne,  who  married  a  daughter  of  the  family  of 
Ravenscroft,  added  to  the  estate  the  property  called  Broadlane.  The  Broad- 
lane  House  became  the  nucleus  of  Hawarden  castle.  The  property  was 
greatly  improved  by  Sir  John,  who  made  the  boundaries  of  the  estate  about 
what  they  are  at  the  present  time.  More  than  seven  thousand  acres  are 
included  in  the   property,  of  which  the   park  comprises  about  two  hundred 


io6 


LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 


MARRIAGE    AND    FIRST    APPEARANCE    IN    LITERATURE.  107 

acres  and  the  other  improved  grounds  about  five  hundred  acres  additional. 
By  a  coincidence,  the  present  Hawarden  house  was  built  in  the  year  of  the 
birth  of  Mr.  Gladstone — as  if  to  prepare  a  way  for  the  future.  Sir  Stephen, 
father  of  Mrs.  Gladstone,  added  many  improvements  in  his  time;  and  still 
greater  changes  and  rectifications  were  made  by  Mr.  Gladstone  himself,  in 
1864. 

The  marriage  of  the  statesman,  when  he  had  nearly  completed  his 
thirtieth  year,  was  in  every  respect  auspicious.  The  young  wife  was  a 
lady  ot  many  accomplishments,  noble  character,  fine  native  talents  and  a 
happy  sympathy  with  the  ambition  of  her  husband.  The  union  of  the  two 
proved  to  be  prosperous  and  congenial  in  the  highest  measure.  The 
Gladstone  family  as  a  whole  came  into  public  notice,  and  rose  with  the 
reputation  of  the  statesman,  until  it  became  of  world-wide  note  and  most 
enviable  reputation. 

The  marriage  of  Mr.  Gladstone  and  the  foundation  of  his  own  house 
was  coincident  In  time  with  his  first  formal  appearance  in  the  world  of 
letters.  It  was  in  1837-38  that  he  wrote  and  in  the  latter  year  that  he 
published  his  first  book.  It  appeared  in  two  volumes,  under  the  title  of 
The  State  in  its  Relations  with  the  Church.  Already  in  Parliament 
the  powerful  beginnings  had  been  seen  of  the  movement  the  logical  end 
of  which  was  the  disestablishment  of  that  great  religious  organization 
which  since  the  Reformation  had  been  so  closely  interwoven  with  the 
structure  and  spirit  of  civil  society.  The  movement  in  question  had  spread 
alarm  throughout  conservative  England.  Every  Tory  must  in  the  nature 
of  the  case  declaim  against  it.  Every  upholder  of  the  established  order 
must  lift  up  his  voice  in  warning. 

In  Mr.  Gladstones  case  he  was  not  at  all  satisfied  with  academic  and 
parliamentary  declamation.  On  the  contrary,  at  the  very  time  when  he  was 
mounting  to  distinction  and  falling  in  love,  he  sat  down  deliberately  to 
consider  and  set  forth  the  bottom  principles  in  the  existing  ecclesiastical 
system.  That  system  included  the  union  of  Church  and  State.  It  included 
the  powerful  patronage  and  support  of  the  Church  by  the  State.  It  virtually 
made  the  State  and  the  Church  to  be  parts  or  organs  of  a  common  entity. 
Mr.  Gladstone  was  not  willing  that  this  should  simply  be  so,  but  he  must 
dig  down  and  discover  the  principles  upon  which  the  system  was  founded, 
and  the  justification  of  it  in  right  reason  and  good  policy.  He  had  studied 
all  that  former  philosophers  had  written  on  the  subject.  He  knew  Hooker's 
Ecclesiastical  Polity  and  Warburton's  Alliance  of  Chnrch  and  State  as- 
if  by  heart.  He  was  familiar  with  the  writings  of  Locke,  had  carefully 
considered  Filmer's  Pati'iarchical  Theory  of  Government,  and  Black- 
stone's  dissertations  on  secular  and  sacred  law.  In  like  manner  he  had 
weighed  whatever  Paley  and  Bolingbroke  and  Dr.  Chalmers  had  said  on  the 


I08  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

great  question  of  the  relations  of  the  State  to  the  rehgious  estabhshment  in 
Great  Britain.  He  had  looked  at  the  works  of  the  authors  referred  to  with 
a  critical  eye,  and  had  discovered  their  insufficiency.  None  of  the  argu- 
ments seemed  to  satisfy  his  inquiring  and  honest  mind.  Therefore  must  he 
consider  the  whole  question  ab  ovo,  and  find  for  himself  the  real  foundation 
upon  which  the  combined  structure  of  English  State  and  English  Church 
rested.  Therefore  must  he  formulate  new  arguments,  gathered  more 
substantially  out  of  the  nature  of  things,  out  of  right  reason,  and  out  of  the 
particular  conditions  acknowledged  in  British  society. 

Thus  arose  the  book  on  Church  and  State — a  work  much  debated 
about  in  its  own  time,  and  regarded  with  curiosity  to  the  present  day.  The 
author  defined  himself  in  the  title  as  "  W.  E.  Gladstone,  Esq.,  Student  of 
Christchurch,  and  M.  P.  for  Newark."  The  first  edition  of  the  book  went 
to  the  public  in  1838;  but  the  standard  edition  (the  second)  appeared  in  the 
beginning  of  1839.  The  publication  produced  a  distinct  impression  on  the 
public  mind.  It  was  made  the  subject  of  Macaulay's  memorable  essay  in  the 
April  number  of  the  EdinburgJi  Rcvieiu  of  that  year.  This  essay  appears  in 
all  the  standard  editions  of  Macaulay,  and  has  thus  been  disseminated  wher- 
ever English  speech  is  heard.  The  fact  is  that  a  good  portion  of  the  repu- 
tation of  Gladstone's  first  book  has  depended,  at  least  for  perpetuity,  on 
the  splendid  criticism  which  the  master  of  that  art  gave  to  the  work  on  the 
appearance  of  the  second  edition. 

We  shall  for  this  reason,  in  what  we  have  to  say  about  the  first  formal 
work  published  by  Mr.  Gladstone,  refer  quite  fully  to  Macaulay's  critique. 
It  should  be  borne  in  m.ind  that  the  author  of  the  book  became  himself  a 
noted  reviewer.  His  articles  soon  found  their  way  into  the  Quarterly 
Review,  which  publication,  by  the  way,  was  another  of  those  remarkable 
facts  which  date  their  origin  to  the  great  year  1809.  Macaulay  quickly 
recognized  the  fact  that  a  new  personal  force  had  appeared  in  British 
society.  He  himself  and  that  new  personal  force  were  diametrically  opposed 
in  nearly  every  particular  of  theory  and  life.  Macaulay  was  at  this  time 
the  great  light  of  the  Edinburgh  coterie.  He  was  a  Whig  of  the  \Miigs, 
though  it  could  hardly  be  said  that  Gladstone,  Conservative  as  he  was,  was 
a  Tory  of  Tories.  His  book,  however,  was  conceived  wholly  from  the 
Tory  point  of  view\  It  was  written  as  if  from  Oxford,  It  was  virtually  an 
Oxford  production.  Not  that  Mr.  Gladstone  did  not  himself  produce  it 
and  stamp  his  genius  on  it,  chapter  by  chapter,  and  line  by  line  ;  but  he 
himself  was  stiW,  par  exee//ence,  an  Oxford  man,  and  he  would  fain  furnish 
Oxford  with  a  better  philosophical  foundation  than  she  had  ever  yet  pos- 
sessed for  one  of  her  favorite  tenets,  namely,  the  union  of  Church  and  State. 

This  condition  must  be  borne  in  mind  in  estimating  the  force  of  Macau- 
lay's criticism.      It  was  Whig  against  Tory.      If  the  review^er  had  not  had  a 


FIRST    APPEARANCE    IN    LITERATURE.  IO9 

profound  respect  for  the  young  man  Gladstone,  he  would  have  treated 
him  as  he  treated  the  poet  Montgomery  or  the  political  adventurer  Barere  ; 
but  there  is  nothing  of  this  kind  in  the  great  critic's  review  of  Gladstone's 
book.  On  the  contrary,  Macaulay  does  himself  proudly,  and  the  author  of 
the  book  respectfully,  from  beginning  to  end.  "  The  author  of  this  vol- 
ume," says  he,  "  is  a  young  man  of  unblemished  character,  and  of  distin- 
guished parliamentary  talents,  the  rising  hope  of  those  stern  and  unbending 
Tories,  who  follow,  reluctantly  and  mutinously,  a  leader  whose  experience 
and  eloquence  are  indispensable  to  them,  but  whose  cautious  temper  and 
moderate  opinions  they  abhor.  It  would  not  be  at  all  strange  if  Mr.  Glad- 
stone w^ere  one  of  the  most  unpopular  men  in  England.  But  w^e  believe  that 
we  do  him  no  more  than  justice  when  we  say,  that  his  abilities  and  his 
demeanor  have  obtained  for  him  the  respect  and  good  will  of  all  parties. 
His  first  appearance  in  the  character  of  an  author  is  therefore  an  interest- 
ing event ;  and  it  is  natural  that  the  gentle  wishes  of  the  public  should  go 
with  him  to  his  trial." 

This  paragraph  has  often  been  cited  by  the  curious  in  political  history 
as  a  striking  example  of  the  unforeseen  that  comes  to  pass  in  the  affairs  of 
men.  Here  we  have  him  who  was  to  become  the  greatest  Liberal  leader 
in  the  annals  of  England  described — and  truly  described — as  "the  rising 
hope  of  those  stern  and  unbending  Tories,  who  follow,  reluctantly  and 
mutinously,  a  leader  whose  experience  and  eloquence  are  indispensable  to 
them,  but  wdiose  cautious  temper  and  moderate  opinions  they  abhor.''  The 
critic  adds  that  Gladstone  at  that  time  mio^ht  be  res^arded  as  one  of  the 
most  unpopular  men  in  England.  This  implies  that  he  had  no  popularity 
or  place  with  the  Liberals  of  the  day;  certainly  he  had  none  with  the  Radi- 
cals. It  also  implies  that  while  he  was  necessary  to  the  young  Tories  in 
and  out  of  Parliament,  they  really  abhorred  his  moderate  opinions.  How 
great  the  change  that  w^as  to  ensue  in  the  next  three  decades — a  change  by 
which  all  the  existing  relations  in  1839  were  to  be  utterly  reversed! 

Macaulay  has  stated  the  theory  of  Mr.  Gladstone  in  his  work  on 
Church  and  State  as  resting  on  a  single  "great  fundamental  proposition — 
that  the  propagation  of  religious  truth  is  one  of  the  principal  ends  of  gov- 
ernment, as  eovernment."  The  reviewer  adds  that  if  Mr.  Gladstone  does 
not  prove  this  proposition,  his  whole  argument  vanishes  away.  This  is 
correctly  stated.  Gladstone's  book  does  attempt  to  support  the  proposition 
that  the  propagation  of  religious  truth  is  one  of  the  great  ends,  if  not  the 
greatest  end,  of  human  government,  and  that  therefore  the  established  reli- 
gious order  in  England  is,  so  to  speak,  one  of  the  functions  of  the  British 
government,  to  be  administered  with  as  much  care  as  if  it  were  the  army, 
or  the  polls,  or  the  system  of  coast  defenses,  or  the  police,  or  the  post,  or  the 
colonial  administration  of  the  empire. 


IIO  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OE    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

We  will  append  two  or  three  critical  quotations  from  the  book  in  which 
Mr.  Gladstone  expresses  in  his  own  lofty  and  at  times  somewhat  vague 
manner  the  bottom  doctrines  which  he  would  defend  and  make  permanent 
in  the  polity  of  Great  Britain.  One  of  his  arguments  is  to  show  that  only 
communicants  of  the  Church  of  England  ought  to  be  selected  for  office,  and 


LORD    MACAULAY. 
(Photograph  by  MauU  £sf  Fox.) 


that  all  others  may  be  rightfully  excluded.     On  this  hypothesis  he  builds  up 
the  following  argument : 

"  We  may  state  the  same  proposition  in  a  more  general  form,  in  which 
it  surely  must  command  universal  assent.  Wlierever  there  is  power  in  the 
universe,  that  power  is  the  property  of  God,  the  King  of  that  universe — 
his  property  of  right,  however  for  a  time  withholden  or  abused.  Now  this 
property  is,  as  it  were,  realized,  is  used  according  to  the  will  of  the  owner, 


FIRST    APPEARANCE    IN    LITERATURE.  Ill 

when  it  is  used  for  the  purposes  he  has  ordained,  and  in  the  temper  of 
mercy,  justice,  truth,  and  faith,  which  he  has  taught  us.  But  those  principles 
never  can  be  truly,  never  can  be  permanently  entertained  in  the  human 
breast,  except  by  a  continual  reference  to  their  source,  and  the  supply  of 
the  divine  grace.  The  powers,  therefore,  that  dwell  in  individuals  acting 
as  a  s^overnment,  as  well  as  those  that  dwell  in  individuals  actino-  for 
themselves,  can  only  be  secured  for  right  uses  by  applying  to  them  a 
reliction." 

Further  on,  and  in  pursuance  of  the  same  line  of  argument  which  the 
author  perceived  he  must  make  secure  against  all  attack,  he  continues: 

"  Why,  then,  we  come  now  to  ask,  should  the  governing  body  in  a  State 
profess  a  religion.?  First,  because  it  is  composed  of  individual  fiieji ;  and 
they,  being  appointed  to  act  in  a  definite  moral  capacity,  must  sanctify  their 
acts  done  in  that  capacity  by  the  offices  of  religion,  inasmuch  as  the  acts 
cannot  otherwise  be  acceptable  to  God,  or  anything  but  sinful  and  punish- 
able in  themselves.  And  whenever  we  turn  our  face  away  from  God  in  our 
conduct,  we  are  living  atheistically.  .  .  .  In  fulfillment,  then,  of  his  obli- 
gations as  an  individual,  the  statesman  must  be  a  worshiping  man.  But 
his  acts  are  public — the  powers  and  instruments  with  which  he  works  are 
public — acting  under  and  by  the  authority  of  the  law,  he  moves  at  his  word 
ten  thousand  subject  arms.  And  because  such  energies  are  thus  essentially 
public,  and  wholly  out  of  the  range  of  mere  individual  agency,  they  must 
be  sanctified  not  only  by  the  private  personal  prayers  and  piety  of  those 
who  fill  public  situations,  but  also  by  public  acts  of  the  men  composing  the 
public  body.  They  must  offer  prayer  and  praise  in  their  public  and  collec- 
tive character — in  that  character  wherein  they  constitute  the  organ  of  the 
nation,  and  wield  its  collected  force.  Wherever  there  is  a  reasoning  agency, 
there  is  a  moral  duty  and  responsibility  involved  in  it.  The  governors  are 
reasoning  agents  for  the  nation,  in  their  conjoint  acts  as  such.  And  there- 
fore there  must  be  attached  to  this  agency,  as  that  without  which  none  of 
our  responsibilities  can  be  met,  a  religion.  And  this  religion  must  be  that 
of  the  conscience  of  the  governor,  or  none." 

Still  again,  the  author,  holding  persistently  to  the  fundamental  doc- 
trines of  his  thesis,  says  : 

"  National  will  and  agency  are  indisputably  one,  binding  either  a  dis- 
sentient minority,  or  the  subject  body,  in  a  manner  that  nothing  but  the 
recognition  of  the  doctrine  of  national  personality  can  justify.  National 
honor  and  good  faith  are  words  in. everyone's  mouth.  How  do  they  less 
imply  a  personality  in  nations  than  the  duty  toward  God,  for  which  we 
now  contend.?  They  are  strictly  and  essentially  distinct  from  the  honor 
and  good  faith  of  the  individuals  composing  the  nation.  France  is  a  person 
to  us,  and  we  to  her.     A  willful  injury  done  to  her  is  a  moral  act,  and  a  moral 


112  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

act  quite  distinct  from  the  acts  of  all  the  individuals  composing  the  nation. 
Upon  broad  facts  like  these  we  may  rest,  without  resorting  to  the  more 
technical  proof  which  the  laws  afford  in  their  manner  of  dealing  with  cor- 
porations. If,  then,  a  nation  have  unity  of  will,  have  pervading  sympathies, 
have  the  capability  of  reward  and  suffering  contingent  upon  its  acts,  shall 
we  deny  its  responsibility;  its  need  of  a  religion  to  meet  that  responsibility.'^ 
.  ,  .  A  nation,  then,  having  a  personality,  lies  under  the  obligation,  like 
the  individuals  composing  its  governing  body,  of  sanctifying  the  acts  of  that 
personality  by  the  offices  of  religion,  and  thus  we  have  a  new  and  impera- 
tive ground  for  the  existence  of  a  State  religion." 

These  extracts  sufficiently  elucidate  the  bottom  grounds  on  which  Mr. 
Gladstone  built  up  with  so  much  pains  and  cogency  his  system  of  Church 
and  State.  The  argument  was  new.  It  was  invented  out  of  the  philosophy 
of  conditions  existing  in  England,  and  existing  still  more  widely  in  the 
abstract  consideration  of  the  nature  and  functions  of  human  government. 
Macaulay  must  attack  this  argument,  if  at  all,  in  its  fundamental  assump- 
tions ;  and  that  he  does  in  the  review  which  we  have  before  us — a  review  as 
famous  as  the  book  to  which  it  is  directed. 

The  critic,  like  the  author,  went  down  to  the  bottom  principle  of  the 
controversy.  That  principle  involved,  on  the  one  hand,  the  assumption  that 
government  has  for  one  of  its  leading  functions  the  propagation  of  religious 
truth,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  the  assumption  that  government  Is  strictly  a 
secular  affair  limited  to  the  office  of  protecting  the  persons  and  estates  of 
citizens  from  injury. 

This  question,  we  may  remark,  has  now  been  virtually  solved  by  the 
logic  and  process  of  events.  History  within  this  century  has  demonstrated 
that  human  government  is  a  secular,  and  not  a  religious  affair.  True,  there 
is  a  large  class  of  well-meaning  people,  diffused  in  varying  numbers  and 
varying  zeal  through  all  the  civilized  nations,  who  still  claim  that  religion  is 
a  subject  about  which  government  should  be  constantly  concerning  itself. 
Such  persons  go  through  life  In  a  ferment  of  excitement,  the  end  and  aim 
of  which  Is  to  get  the  government  to  Interfere  more  and  more  with  the  reli- 
gious and  moral  questions  of  men.  But  the  class  referred  to  are  no  longer 
potent  as  they  once  were.  It  has  become  a  disorganized  class,  whose  office 
is  annoying,  but  hardly  any  longer  disturbing  to  the  course  and  manner  of 
secular  administration. 

A  half  a  century  ago,  however,  the  case  was  different.  Then  It  was 
still  necessary  to  Insist  stoutly  that  government  should  be  restricted  to  its 
normal  and  necessary  functions,  and  that  these  functions  had  respect  only  to 
the  secular  conditions  of  society.  This  ground  was  boldly  assumed  by  Mr. 
Macaulay  in  his  review  of  Gladstone's  book.  Speaking  of  the  two  theories, 
the  two  possible  objects  of  government,  the  one  being  the  propagation  of 


FIRST    APPEARANCE    IN    LITERATURE.  II3 

religious  truth,  and  the  other  the  protection  of  the  persons  and  estates  of 
citizens  from  injury,  the  critic  says  : 

"  No  two  objects  more  entirely  distinct  can  well  be  imagined.  The  one 
object  belongs  wholly  to  the  visible  and  tangible  world  in  which  we  live  ; 
the  other  belongs  to  that  higher  world  beyond  the  reach  of  our  senses.  The 
one  belongs  to  this  life  ;  the  other,  to  that  which  is  to  come." 

Macaulay  goes  on,  by  parity  of  reasoning,  to  show  what  the  Gladstonian 
principle  would  lead  to  if  applied  to  society  and  its  organized  forces  in  gen- 
eral.    He  reaches  the  reductio  ad absurdifni  as  follows: 

"  Take  any  combination  at  random — the  London  and  Birmingham  Rail- 
way Company,  for  example — and  observe  to  what  consequences  Mr.  Glad- 
stone's arguments  inevitably  lead.  Thus:  '  Why  should  the  directors  of  the 
railway  company  in  their  collective  capacity  profess  a  religion  ?  First, 
because  the  collection  is  composed  of  individual  men  appointed  to  act  in  a 
definite  moral  capacity — bound  to  look  carefully  to  the  property,  the  limbs, 
and  the  lives  of  their  fellow-creatures — bound  to  act  diligently  for  their  con- 
stituents— bound  to  govern  their  servants  with  humanity  and  justice — bound 
to  fulfill  with  fidelity  many  important  contracts.  They  must  therefore  sanc- 
tify their  acts  by  the  offices  of  religion,  or  these  acts  will  be  sinful  and 
punishable  in  themselves.  In  fulfillment,  then,  of  his  obligations  as  an  indi- 
vidual, the  Director  of  the  London  and  Birmingham  Railway  Company  must 
be  a  worshiping  man.  But  his  acts  are  public.  He  acts  for  a  body.  He 
moves  at  his  word  ten  thousand  subject  arms.  And  because  these  energies 
are  out  of  the  range  of  his  mere  individual  agency  they  must  be  sanctified 
by  public  acts  of  devotion.  The  railway  directors  must  offer  prayer  and 
praise  in  their  public  and  collective  character — in  that  character  wherewith 
they  constitute  the  organ  of  the  company  and  wield  its  collected  power. 
Wherever  there  is  reasoning  agency,  there  is  moral  responsibility.  The 
directors  are  reasoning  agents  for  the  company.  And  therefore  there  must 
be  attached  to  this  agency,  as  that  without  which  none  of  our  responsibili- 
ties can  be  met,  a  religion.  And  this  religion  must  be  that  of  the  con- 
science of  the  director  himself,  or  none.  There  must  be  public  worship  and 
a  test.  No  Jew,  no  Socinian,no  Presbyterian,  no  Catholic,  no  Quaker,  must 
be  permitted  to  be  the  organ  of  the  company  and  to  wield  its  collected 
force.'  Would  Mr.  Gladstone  really  defend  this  proposition  }  We  are  sure 
that  he  would  not;  but  we  are  sure  that  to  this  proposition  and  to  innumer- 
able similar  propositions  his  reasoning  inevitably  leads." 

The  brilliant  and  profound  reviewer  next  proceeds  as  follows  : 

"  Is  it  not  perfectly  clear  that  Mr.  Gladstone's  argument  applies  with 
exactly  as  much  force  to  every  combination  of  human  beings  for  a  common 
purpose,  as  to  governments  .?  Is  there  any  such  combination  in  the  world, 
whether  technically  a   corporation   or   not,   which    has    not   this    collective 

8 


114  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

personality  from  which  Mr.  Gladstone  deduces  such  extraordinary  conse- 
quences ?  Look  at  banks,  insurance  offices,  dock  companies,  canal  com- 
panies, gas  companies,  hospitals,  dispensaries,  associations  for  the  relief  of 
the  poor,  associations  for  apprehending  malefactors,  associations  of  medical 
pupils  for  procuring  subjects,  associations  of  country  gentlemen  for  keeping 
foxhounds,  book  societies,  benefit  societies,  clubs  of  all  ranks,  from  those 
which  have  lined  Pall  Mall  and  St.  James'  Street  with  their  palaces,  down 
to  the  '  free  and  easy  '  which  meets  in  the  shabby  parlor  of  a  village  inn. 
Is  there  a  single  one  of  these  combinations  to  which  Mr.  Gladstone's  argu- 
ment will  not  apply  as  well  as  to  the  State  ?  In  all  these  combinations — in 
the  Bank  of  England,  for  example,  or  in  the  Athen^um  Club — the  will  and 
agency  of  the  society  are  one,  and  bind  the  dissentient  minority.  The  bank 
and  the  Athenaeum  have  a  good  faith  and  a  justice  different  from  the  good 
faith  and  the  justice  qf  the  individual  members.  The  bank  is  a  person  to 
those  who  deposit  bullion  with  it.  The  Athenaeum  is  a  person  to  the 
butcher  and  the  wine  merchant.  If  the  Athenaeum  keeps  money  at  the 
bank,  the  two  societies  are  as  much  persons  to  each  other  as  England  and 
France.  Either  society  may  increase  in  prosperity  ;  either  may  fall  into 
difficulties.  If,  then,  they  have  this  unity  of  will  ;  if  they  are  capable  of 
doing  and  suffering  good  and  evil,  can  we,  to  use  Mr.  Gladstone's  words, 
'deny  their  responsibility,  or  their  need  of  a  religion  to  meet  that  responsi- 
bility.?' Joint-stock  banks,  therefore,  and  clubs  'having  a  personality  lie 
under  the  necessity  of  sanctifying  that  personality  by  the  offices  of  religion  ;' 
and  thus  we  have  *  a  new  and  imperative  ground  '  for  requiring  all  the 
directors  and  clerks  of  joint-stock  banks,  and  all  the  officers  of  clubs  to 
qualify  by  taking  the  sacrament." 

From  these  paragraphs  the  reader  may  discover  Macaulay's  astuteness 
and  logical  fence  in  answering  and  undoing  the  bottom  assumptions  of  Mr. 
Gladstone's  book.      Further  on  the  critic  says  : 

"  It  is  perfectly  true  that  it  would  be  a  very  good  thing  if  all  the  mem- 
bers of  all  the  associations  in  the  world  were  men  of  sound  reliofious  views. 
We  have  no  doubt  that  a  good  Christian  will  be  under  the  guidance  of 
Christian  principles  in  his  conduct  as  director  of  a  canal  company  or  stew- 
ard of  a  charity  dinner.  If  he  were,  to  refer  to  a  case  which  we  before  put, 
a  member  of  a  stage  coach  company  he  would,  in  that  capacity,  remember 
that  '  a  riorhteous  man  resfardeth  the  life  of  his  beast.'  But  it  does  not 
follow  that  every  association  of  men  must  therefore,  as  such  association, 
profess  a  religion.  It  is  evident  that  many  great  and  useful  objects  can  be 
attained  in  this  world  only  by  cooperation.  It  is  equally  evident  that  there 
cannot  be  efficient  cooperation  if  men  proceed  on  the  principle  that  they 
must  not  cooperate  for  one  object  unless  they  agree  about  other  objects. 
Nothing  seems  to  us  more  beautiful  or  admirable  in  our  social  system   than 


FIRST    APPEARANCE    IN    LITERATURE.  II5 

the  facility  with  which  thousands  of  people,  who  perhaps  agree  only  on  a 
single  point,  combine  their  energies  for  the  purpose  of  carrying  that  single 
point.  We  see  daily  instances  of  this.  Two  men,  one  of  them  obstinately 
prejudiced  against  missions,  the  other  president  of  a  missionary  society,  sit 
together  at  the  board  of  an  hospital  and  heartily  concur  in  measures  for 
the  health  and  comfort  of  the  patients.  Two  men,  one  of  whom  is  a  zealous 
supporter  and  the  other  a  zealous  opponent  of  the  system  pursued  in  Lan- 
caster's schools,  meet  at  the  Mendicity  Society,  and  act  together  with  the 
utmost  cordiality.  The  general  rule  we  take  to  be  undoubtedly  this,  that 
it  is  lawful  and  expedient  for  men  to  unite  in  an  association  for  the  promo- 
tion of  a  good  object,  though  they  may  differ  with  respect  to  other  objects 
of  still  higher  importance." 

Further  on  in  his  argument  against  the  principles  of  Gladstone  Macau- 
lay  continues : 

"  It  is  impossible  to  name  any  collection  of  human  beings  to  which  Mr. 
Gladstone's  reasonings  would  apply  more  strongly  than  to  an  army.  Where 
shall  we  find  more  complete  unity  of  action  than  In  an  army  }  Where  else 
do  so  many  human  beings  implicitly  obey  one  ruling  mind  ?  What  other 
mass  Is  there  which  moves  so  much  like  one  man  ?  Where  is  such  tremen- 
dous power  intrusted  to  those  who  command  }  Where  is  so  awful  a  respon- 
sibility laid  upon  them  }  If  Mr.  Gladstone  has  made  out,  as  he  conceives, 
an  imperative  necessity  for  a  State  religion,  much  more  has  he  made  it  out 
to  be  imperatively  necessary  that  every  army  should,  In  Its  collective 
capacity,  profess  a  religion.     Is. he  prepared  to  adopt  this  consequence  } 

'*  On  the  morning  of  the  13th  of  August,  in  the  year  1704,  two  great 
captains,  equal  in  authority,  united  by  close  private  and  public  ties,  but  of 
different  creeds,  prepared  for  a  battle,  on  the  event  of  which  were  staked  the 
liberties  of  Europe.  Marlborough  had  passed  a  part  of  the  night  In  prayer, 
and  before  daybreak  received  the  sacrament  according  to  the  rites  of  the 
Church  of  England.  He  then  hastened  to  join  Eugene,  who  had  probably 
just  confessed  himself  to  a  popish  priest.  The  generals  consulted  together, 
formed  their  plan  in  concert,  and  repaired  each  to  his  own  post.  Marl- 
borough gave  orders  for  public  prayers.  The  English  chaplains  read  the 
service  at  the  head  of  the  English  regiments.  The  Calvinlstic  chaplains  of 
the  Dutch  army,  with  heads  on  which  hand  of  bishop  had  never  been  laid, 
poured  forth  their  supplication  In  front  of  their  countrymen.  In  the  mean- 
time the  Danes  might  listen  to  their  Lutheran  ministers,  and  Capuchins 
might  encourage  the  Austrian  squadrons,  and  pray  to  the  Virgin  for  a 
blessing  on  the  arms  of  the  holy  Roman  empire.  The  battle  commences, 
and  these  men  of  various  religions  all  act  like  members  of  one  body.  The 
Catholic  and  the  Protestant  generals  exert  themselves  to  assist  and  to 
surpass  each  other.     Before  sunset  the  empire  is  saved.     France  has  lost  in 


Il6  LIP'E    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM     E.    GLADSTONE. 

a  day  the  fruits  of  eighty  years  of  intrigue  and  of  victory.  And  the  alHes, 
after  conquering  together,  return  thanks  to  God  separately,  each  after  his 
own  form  of  worship.  Now,  is  this  practical  atheism  }  Would  any  man 
in  his  senses  say  that,  because  the  allied  army  had  unity  of  action  and  a 
common  interest,  and  because  a  heavy  responsibility  lay  on  its  chiefs,  it 
was,  therefore,  imperatively  necessary  that  the  army  should,  as  an  army, 
have  one  established  religion,  that  Eugene  should  be  deprived  of  his  com- 
mand for  beine  a  Catholic,  that  all  the  Dutch  and  Austrian  colonels  should 
be  broken  for  not  subscribing  to  the  Thirty-nine  Articles  }  Certainly  not. 
The  most  ignorant  erenadier  on  the  field  of  battle  would  have  seen  the 
absurdity  of  such  a  proposition.  '  I  know,'  he  would  have  said,  '  that  the 
Prince  of  Savoy  goes  to  mass  and  that  our  Corporal  John  cannot  abide  it, 
but  what  has  the  mass  to  do  with  the  takincr  of  the  villao-e  of  Blenheim  ? 
The  prince  wants  to  beat  the  French,  and  so  does  Corporal  John.  If  we 
stand  by  each  other  we  shall  most  likely  beat  them.  If  we  send  all  the 
papists  and  Dutch  away  Tallard  will  have  every  man  of  us.'  Mr.  Glad- 
stone himself,  we  imagine,  would  admit  that  our  honest  grenadier  had  the 
best  of  the  argument  ;  and  if  so,  what  follows  }  Even  this  :  that  all  Mr. 
Gladstone's  general  principles  about  power  and  responsibility  and  person- 
ality and  conjoint  action  must  be  given  up,  and  that,  if  his  theory  is  to 
stand  at  all,  It  must  stand  on  some  other  foundation. 

"  We  have  now,  we  conceive,  shown  that  it  may  be  proper  to  form  men 
into  combinations  for  important  purposes,  which  combinations  shall  have 
unity  and  common  interests,  and  shall  be  under  the  direction  of  rulers 
intrusted  with  great  power  and  lying  under  solemn  responsibility,  and  yet 
that  it  may  be  highly  improper  that  these  combinations  should,  as  such, 
profess  any  one  system  of  religious  belief,  or  perform  any  joint  act  of  reli- 
gious worship.  How,  then,  is  it  proved  that  this  may  not  be  the  case  with 
some  of  those  great  combinations  which  we  call  States  }  We  firmly  believe 
that  it  is  the  case  with  some  States.  We  firmly  believe  that  there  are 
communities  in  which  it  would  be  as  absurd  to  mix  up  theology  with  gov- 
ernment as  It  would  have  been  in  the  rlorht  wlno-  of  the  allied  armv  at 
Blenheim  to  commence  a  controversy  with  the  left  wing,  in  the  middle  of 
the  battle,  about  purgatory  and  the  worship  of  images." 

In  the  further  course  of  this  remarkable  criticism  ^Nlacaulay  takes  up 
Gladstone's  particular  argument  for  the  exclusion  of  Dissenters  from  public 
office.  On  this  subject  the  debate  waxes  hot.  The  critic  charges  home 
upon  the  author  the  justification  of  doctrines  which  would  lead  to  the  repe- 
tition of  all  the  rellelous  barbarities  of  the  Middle  Ao-es.  He  succeeds  In 
making  appear  in  their  true  absurdity  the  humane  exceptions  and  restraints 
which  Mr,  Gladstone  would  fain  put  on  the  naked  barbarity  of  the  legiti- 
mate results  and  deductions  of  his  thesis. 


FIRST  APPEARANCE  IN  LITERATURE.  II7 

We  may  not  here  pursue  with  any  considerable  fullness  the  lengthy 
review  which  Macaulay  presents  of  the  vicious  elements  in  Gladstone's 
book.  He  does  not  hesitate  to  say  that  on  the  whole  it  is  one  of  the  worst 
books  ever  written  ;  that  it  is  false,  and  that  the  doctrines  are  so  pernicious 
that  they  would  lead,  if  carried  into  practical  operation,  to  the  dissolution 
of  society.  At  the  same  time  he  loses  no  opportunity  to  comment  favor- 
ably on  the  high  talents  and  character  of  the  author,  and  of  his  possible  and 
probable  usefulness  in  the  intellectual  and  public  life  of  Great  Britain.  The 
severity  of  the  strictures  is  everywhere  tempered  with  respect  to  the  source 
trom  which  the  book  proceeded. 

It  is  evident  in  the  present  reconsideration  of  the  subject,  after  the 
lapse  of  more  than  a  half  a  century — after  allowing  for  the  current  prejudices 
of  both  the  author  and  the  critic,  and  for  the  disparity  in  the  then  literary 
experience  and  fame  of  the  two  men— that  Macaulay  succeeded  in  demol- 
ishing and  making  of  no  effect  the  elaborate  structure  which  Gladstone  had 
built  up  with  so  great  pains,  and,  indeed,  with  so  much  learning.  The  author 
was  in  the  wrong,  and  the  critic  mainly  in  the  right.  The  present  age  would 
be  much  less  patient  with  a  book  advocating  the  propagation  of  religious 
truth  as  one  of  the  legitimate  and  necessary  functions  of  government  than 
was  the  age  of  which  we  are  speaking — of  the  age  when  it  was  still  doubtful 
whether  Alfred  Tennyson  could  write  a  good  poem,  and  when  the  bones  of 
Napoleon  were  still  resting  under  the  slab  in  Slane's  valley. 

We  shall  not  pass,  however,  from  the  interesting  topic  of  Gladstone's 
first  appearance  and  defeat  in  the  field  of  literature  without  noting  with 
admiration  the  correspondence  to  which  the  episode  gave  rise  between  the 
author  of  The  State  in  its  Relations  with  the  Church  and  the  brilliant 
scholar  before  whose  trenchant  blade  he  went  to  the  wall.  Much  later  in 
life,  namely,  in  1868,  Mr.  Gladstone  published  his  Chapter  of  Autobiography, 
in  which  he  reviewed  at  some  length  the  circumstances  of  the  issuance  of 
his  first  book,  gave  what  justification  he  could  in  the  retrospect,  and 
renounced  the  rest,  but  in  particular  gave  publicity  to  the  two  letters  which 
were  exchanged  between  himself  and  Macaulay  on  the  occasion  of  the  pub- 
lication by  the  latter  of  his  celebrated  article  on  "  Church  and  State," 
These  letters  are  here  incorporated,  not  only  for  their  own  intrinsic 
interest,  but  for  the  lesson  which  they  teach,  and  ought  to  teach,  relative 
to  the  narrow-minded  rancor  and  puny  enmities  which  sometimes  prevail 
among  public  and  literary  men  in  the  United  States.  After  fifty-six 
years  it  is  still  a  matter  of  inspiration  and  good  cheer  to  read  these  two 
letters  of  rising  Tory  and  famous  Whig,  of  young  author  and  veteran 
critic,  of  political  aspirant  trying  to  bolster  up  the  past,  and  experienced 
publicist  advancing  into  the  future  and  setting  up  the  gonfalon  of  liberal- 
ism far  out  beyond  the  outposts.     The  first  letter  is  from    Mr,  Gladstone, 


Il8  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

written  colnciclently  with  the  appearance  of  Macaulay's  criticism,  and  is  as 
follows : 

"6  Carlton  Gardens,  ^/rz'/  lo,  1839. 

"  Dear  Sir  :  I  have  been  favored  with  a  forthcoming  number  of  the 
Edinburgh  Rcvieiv,  and  I  perhaps  too  much  presume  upon  the  bare 
acquaintance  with  you,  of  which  alone  I  can  boast,  in  thus  unceremoniously 
assuming  you  to  be  the  author  of  the  article  entitled  '  Church  and  State,' 
and  in  offering  you  my  very  warm  and  cordial  thanks  for  the  manner  in 
which  you  have  treated  both  the  work  and  the  author  on  whom  you  deigned 
to  bestow  your  attention.  In  whatever  you  write  you  can  hardly  hope 
for  the  privilege  of  most  anonymous  productions,  a  real  concealment  ; 
but  if  it  had  been  possible  not  to  recognize  you  I  should  have  ques- 
tioned your  authorship  in  this  particular  case,  because  the  candor  and  single- 
mindedness  which  it  exhibits  are,  in  one  who  has  long  been  connected  in 
the  most  distinguished  manner  with  political  party,  so  rare  as  to  be  almost 
Incredible, 

"  I  hope  to  derive  material  benefit,  at  some  more  tranquil  season,  from 
a  consideration  of  your  argument  throughout.  I  am  painfully  sensible, 
whenever  I  have  occasion  to  reopen  the  book,  of  its  shortcomings,  not  only 
of  the  subject,  but  even  of  my  own  conceptions  ;  and  I  am  led  to  suspect 
that,  under  the  influence  of  most  kindly  feelings,  you  have  omitted  to  criti- 
cise many  things  besides  the  argument,  which  might  fairly  have  come  within 
your  animadversion. 

"  In  the  meantime  I  hope  you  will  allow  me  to  apprise  you  that  on 
one  material  point,  especially,  I  am  not  so  far  removed  from  you  as  you  sup- 
pose. I  am  not  conscious  that  I  have  said  either  that  the  Test  Act  should 
be  repealed  or  that  it  should  not  have  been  passed  ;  and  though  on  such 
subjects  language  has  many  bearings  which  escape  the  view  of  the  writer  at 
the  moment  when  the  pen  is  in  his  hand,  yet  I  think  that  I  can  hardly  have 
put  forth  either  of  these  propositions,  because  I  have  never  entertained  the 
corresponding  sentiments.  Undoubtedly  I  should  speak  of  the  pure  abstract 
idea  of  Church  and  State  as  Implying  that  they  are  coextensive ;  and  I 
should  regard  the  present  composition  of  the  United  Kingdom  as  a  devia- 
tion from  that  pure  idea,  but  only  in  the  same  sense  as  all  differences  of 
religious  opinion  in  the  Church  are  a  deviation  from  Its  pure  Idea,  while  I 
not  only  allow  that  they  are  permitted,  but  believe  that  (within  limits)  they 
were  intended  to  be  permitted.  There  are  some  of  these  deflections  from 
abstract  theory  which  appear  to  me  allowable  ;  and  that  of  the  admission 
of  persons  not  holding  the  national  creed  into  civil  office  is  one  which,  in 
my  view,  must  be  determined  by  times  and  circumstances.  At  the  same 
time  I  do  not  recede  from  any  protest  which  I  have  made  against  the  prin- 
ciple that  religious  differences  are  Irrelevant  to  the  question  of  competency 


FIRST    APPEARANCE    IN    LITERATURE.  II9 

for  civil  office;  but  I  would  take  my  stand  between  the  opposite  extremes — 
the  one,  that  no  such  differences  are  to  be  taken  into  view  ;  the  other,  that  all 
such  differences  are  to  constitute  disqualifications. 

"  I  need  hardly  say  the  question  I  raise  is  not  whether  you  have  mis- 
represented me ;  for,  were  I  disposed  to  anything  so  weak,  the  whole  internal 
evidence  and  clear  intention  of  your  article  would  confute  me  ;  indeed,  I  feel 
I  ought  to  apologize  for  even  supposing  that  you  may  have  been  mistaken 
in  the  apprehension  of  my  meaning,  and  I  freely  admit,  on  the  other  hand, 
the  possibility  that,  totally  without  my  own  knowledge,  my  language  may 
have  led  to  such  an  interpretation. 

"  In  these  lacerating  times  one  clings  to  anything  of  personal  kindness 
in  the  past,  to  husband  it  for  the  future,  and  if  you  will  allow  me  I  shall 
earnestly  desire  to  carry  with  me  such  a  recollection  of  your  mode  of  deal- 
ing with  the  subject ;  inasmuch  as  the  attainment  of  truth,  we  shall  agree, 
so  materiall)'  depends  upon  the  temper  in  which  the  search  for  it  is  insti- 
tuted and  conducted. 

"  I  did  not  mean  to  have  troubled  you  at  so  much  length,  and  I  have 
only  to  add  that  I  am,  with  much  respect,  clear  sir, 

"  Very  truly  yours, 
"  T.  B.  Macaulay,  Esq.  W.  E.  Gladstone." 

The  reply  of  Macaulay  to  this  letter  of  the  man  whose  book  he  had 
brought,  not  only  to  the  bar,  but  to  the  rack  also,  is  equally  interesting  and 
honorable.     He  says  on  the  very  next  day  : 

"3  Clarges  Street,  April  ii,  1839. 

"My  Dear  Sir:  I  have  very  seldom  been  more  gratified  than  by 
the  very  kind  note  which  I  have  just  received  from  you.  Your  book  itself, 
and  everything  that  I  heard  about  you,  though  almost  all  my  informa- 
tion came — to  the  honor,  I  must  say,  "of  our  troubled  times — from  people 
very  strongly  opposed  to  you  in  politics,  led  me  to  regard  you  with  respect 
and  good  will,  and  I  am  truly  glad  that  I  have  succeeded  in  marking  those 
feelings.  I  was  half  afraid,  when  I  read  myself  over  again  in  print,  that  the 
button,  as  is  too  common  in  controversial  fencing,  even  between  friends,  had 
once  or  twice  come  off  the  foil. 

"  I  am  very  glad  to  find  that  we  do  not  differ  so  widely  as  I  had  appre- 
hended about  the  Test  Act.  I  can  easily  explain  the  way  in  which  I  was 
misled.  Your  general  principle  is  that  religious  nonconformity  ought  to  be 
a  disqualification  for  civil  office.  In  page  238  you  say  that  the  true  and 
authentic  mode  of  ascertaining  conformity  is  the  Act  of  Communion.  I 
thought,  therefore,  that  your  theory  pointed  directly  to  a  renewal  of  the 
Test  Act.     And  I  do  not  recollect  that  you  have  ever  used  any  expression 


I20  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

importing  that  your  theory  ought  in  practice  to  be  modified  by  any  consid- 
erations of  civil  prudence.  All  the  exceptions  that  you  mention  are,  as  far 
as  I  remember,  founded  on  positive  contract — not  one  on  expediency,  even 
in  cases  where  the  expediency  is  so  strong- and  so  obvious  that  most  states- 
men would  call  it  necessity.  If  I  had  understood  that  you  meant  your  rules 
to  be  followed  out  in  practice  only  so  far  as  might  be  consistent  with  the 
peace  and  good  government  of  society  I  should  certainly  have  expressed 
myself  very  differently  in  several  parts  of  my  article. 

"  Accept  my  warm  thanks  for  your  kindness,  and  believe  me,  with  every 
good  wish,  my  dear  sir, 

"  Very  truly  yours, 

"  W.  E.  Gladstone,  Esq.,  M.  P.  T.  B.  Macaulay." 

Mr.  Gladstone's  work.  The  State  in  its  Relations  zvith  the  Chnrch,  in  so 
far  as  it  had  any  ulterior  motive,  was  intended  to  please  and  inspire  the 
conservative  scholars  and  thinkers  of  Great  Britain.  The  author  had 
Oxford  particularly  in  mind.  To  that  institution  the  book  was  dedicated 
in  these  words:  "Inscribed  to  the  University  of  Oxford;  tried  and  not 
found  wantine  through  the  vicissitudes  of  a  thousand  years  ;  in  the  belief 
that  she  is  providentially  designed  to  be  a  fountain  of  blessings  spiritual, 
social,  and  intellectual,  to  this  and  to  other  countries,  to  the  present  and 
future  times  ;  and  in  the  hope  that  the  temper  of  these  pages  may  be  found 
not  alien  to  her  own." 

Certainly  the  temper  of  the  book  and  its  fundamental  assumptions  were 
not  alien  to  those  of  Oxford.  The  men  of  that  university  received  the  work 
almost  as  a  finality  on  the  great  theme  which  the  author  discussed.  The 
better  thinkers,  however,  of  Toryism,  as  well  as  of  the  Liberal  ranks,  hesitated 
or  drew  back  from  the  defense  of  principles  the  results  of  which  must  be  as 
Macaulay  had  shown.  The  Quarterly  Review  took  up  the  book  as  the  Edin- 
burgh had  done,  but  from  the  conservative  point  of  view.  But  the  Quarterly, 
though  praising  much  the  work  of  the  young  author,  did  not  ratify  his 
arguments  as  such.  The  reviewer  asserted  that  a  popular  government 
could  not  maintain  a  State  religion  against  the  wishes  of  the  people.  If 
the  English  nation  as  such  should  choose  to  renounce  the  Established 
Church,  then  the  king,  the  lords  and  the  Commons,  singly  or  in  union  of 
effort,  would  be  impotent  to  uphold  the  Church,  and  must  indeed  abandon 
it  to  its  fate.  The  writer  did  not  fail  to  observe  that  Gladstone  had  gone 
beyond  his  predecessors  in  seeking  the  bottom  principles  and  sources  of  his 
argument.  "He  has,"  said  the  reviewer,  "  seen  through  the  weakness  and 
fallacy  of  the  line  of  reasoning  pursued  by  Warburton  and  Paley.  And  he 
has  most  wisely  abandoned  the  argument  from  expediency,  which  offers 
little  more  than  an  easy  weapon  to  fence  with,  while  no  real  danger  is  appre- 


FIRST    APPEARANCE    IN    LITERATURE. 


121 


THE  STRAND  AND  ST.  MARY'S  CHURCH,  LONDON. 

hended  ;  and  has  insisted  chiefly  on  the  claims  of  duty  and  truth — the  only 
consideration  which  can  animate  and  support  men  in  a  real  struggle  against 
false  principles."  The  writer  then  proceeded,  in  the  manner  of  Gladstone 
himself,  to  show  that  morality  in  government  cannot  be  maintained  without 
religion.  This  was  a  supposedly  unassailable  proposition  with  the  conserva- 
tive writers  of  the  last  quarter  of  the  eighteenth,  and  the  first  half  of  the  nine- 
teenth century.  If  the  truth  of  this  proposition  be  granted,  then  it  should 
follow  that  the  maintenance  of  religion  is  a  proper  function  of  government, 
and  the  support  of  the  Church,  in  union  with  the  State,  the  necessary 
method  of  enforcing  the  State's  morality. 

Mr.  Gladstone's  first  book  still  fiirnishes  not  a  few  remarkable  studies 
for  the  student  of  political  history.  Among  these  no  part  is  more  interesting 
than  those  paragraphs  in  which  the  author  sets  forth  his  views  respecting 
the  duties  of  the  State  of  Great  Britain  to  uphold  the  Irish  Church.  Little 
did  the  writer  foresee  the  great  change  which  his  own  mind  would  undergo 
before  he  could  become  the  champion  of  disestablishment.  In  the  opening 
chapter  of  the  second  volume  of  The  State  hi  its  Relations  zvith  the  Church 
the  author,  speaking  of  the  Irish  Establishment,  makes  the  following  argu- 
ment for  the  maintenance  of  the  existing  order  : 

"  The  Protestant  Legislature  of  the   British   empire  maintains   in    the 


122  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

possession  of  the  Church  property  of  Ireland  the  ministers  of  a  creed 
professed,  according  to  the  parliamentary  enumeration  of  1835,  by  one 
ninth  of  its  population,  regarded  with  partial  favor  by  scarcely  another 
ninth,  and  disowned  by  the  remaining  seven.  And  not  only  does  this 
anomaly  meet  us  in  full  view,  but  we  have  also  to  consider  and  digest  the 
fact  that  the  maintenance  of  this  Church  for  ne^r  three  centuries  in  Ireland 
has  been  contemporaneous  with  a  system  of  partial  and  abusive  government 
varying  in  degree-  of  culpability,  but  rarely,  until  of  later  years  when  we 
have  been  forced  to  look  at  the  subject  and  to  feel  it,  to  be  exempted  in 
common  fairness  from  the  reproach  of  gross  inattention  (to  say  the  very 
least)  to  the  Interests  of  a  noble  but  neglected  people. 

"  But  however  formidable  at  first  sight  these  admissions,  which  I  have 
no  desire  to  narrow  or  to  qualify,  may  appear,  they  in  no  way  shake  the 
foregoing  arguments.  They  do  not  change  the  nature  of  truth  and  her 
capability  and  destiny  to  benefit  mankind.  They  do  not  relieve  government 
of  its  responsibility,  if  they  show  that  that  responsibility  was  once  unfelt 
and  unsatisfied.  They  place  the  Legislature  of  this  country  in  the  condition, 
as  it  were,  of  one  called  to  do  penance  for  past  offenses  ;  but  duty  remains 
unaltered  and  imperative,  and  abates  nothing  of  her  demand  on  our  services. 
It  is  undoubtedly  competent,  in  a  constitutional  view,  to  the  government  of 
this  country  to  continue  the  present  disposition  of  Church  property  in 
Ireland.  It  appears  not  too  much  to  assume  that  our  imperial  Legislature 
has  been  qualified  to  take,  and  has  taken  in  point  of  fact,  a  sounder  view 
of  religious  truth  than  the  majority  of  the  people  of  Ireland  in  their  desti- 
tute and  uninstructed  state.  We  believe,  accordingly,  that  that  which  we 
place  before  them  is,  whether  they  know  it  or  not,  calculated  to  be  beneficial 
to  them,  and  that,  if  they  know  it  not  now,  they  will  know  it  when  it  is 
presented  to  them  fairly.  Shall  we,  then,  purchase  their  applause  at  the 
expense  of  their  substantial,  nay,  their  spiritual  interests  } 

"  It  does,  indeed,  so  happen  that  there  are  also  powerful  motives  on  the 
other  side  concurring  with  that  which  has  here  been  presented  as  paramount. 
In  the  first  instance  we  are  not  called  upon  to  establish  a  creed,  but  only  to 
maintain  an  existinsf  le^ral  settlement,  where  our  constitutional  riofht  is 
undoubted.  In  the  second,  political  considerations  tend  strongly  to  recom- 
mend that  maintenance.  A  common  form  of  faith  binds  the  Irish  Protes- 
tants to  ourselves,  while  they,  upon  the  other  hand,  are  fast  linked  to 
Ireland  ;  and  thus  they  supply  the  most  natural  bond  of  connection  between 
the  countries.  But  if  England,  by  overthrowing  their  Church,  should 
weaken  their  moral  position  they  would  be  no  longer  able,  perhaps  no  longer 
willing,  to  counteract  the  desires  of  the  majority  tending,  under  the  direc- 
tion of  their  leaders  (however,  by  a  wise  policy,  revocable  from  that  fatal 
course),  to  what  is  termed   national   independence.     Pride  and  fear,  on  the 


FIRST    APPEARANCE    IN    LITERATURE.  1 23 

one  hand,  are,  therefore,  bearing  up  against  more  immediate  apprehension 
and  difficulty,  on  the  other.  And  with  some  men  these  may  be  the  funda- 
mental considerations  ;  but  it  may  be  doubted  whether  such  men  will  not 
flinch  in  some  stage  of  the  contest  should  its  aspect  at  any  moment 
become  unfavorable." 

His  book  on  Church  and  State  put  Mr.  Gladstone  on  the  defensive 
during  his  life.  He  was  constrained  ever  afterward  to  appear  at  intervals 
in  the  role  of  apologist  for  the  doctrines  set  forth  in  his  first  work.  He 
was  obliged  to  ware  right  and  ware  left  in  defending  as  much  as  was  at  all 
defensible  in  his  book.  In  course  of  time  he  openly  disavowed  much  of  it. 
Sometimes,  when  hard  pressed,  he  would  put  forth  an  argument  aptly 
conceived  and  well  calculated  to  conciliate  hostile  criticism.  His  enemies 
urged  that  his  doctrine  of  a  conscience  in  the  State  led  directly  to  the 
exclusion  from  all  participation  in  public  affairs  those  who  had  consciences 
of  different  scope  and  timber  from  that  of  the  governing  power.  It  led 
even,  said  they,  to  persecution  for  opinion's  sake  and  the  revival  of  the 
horrid  vices  of  the  Middle  Aees. 

To  this  Mr.  Gladstone  replied  with  not  a  little  skill :  "  What  political 
or  relative  doctrine  is  there  which  does  not  become  an  absurdity  when 
pushed  to  its  extreme  7  The  taxing  powers  of  the  State,  the  prerogatives 
of  the  crown  to  dissolve  Parliaments  and  to  create  peers,  the  right  of  the 
House  of  Commons  to  withhold  supplies,  the  right  of  the  subject,  not  to 
civil  franchises  only,  but  even  to  security  of  person  and  property — all 
these,  the  plain,  uncontested  rules  of  our  Constitution,  become  severally 
monstrous  and  intolerable  when  they  are  regarded  in  a  partial  and  exclusive 
aspect." 

This  argument  was,  indeed,  adroit  and  powerful,  but  the  antagonist  was 
not  satisfied.  He  returned  to  the  onset,  and  showed  that  Mr.  Gladstone's 
case  of  logical  parity  and  reduction  to  the  absurd  would  not  hold  ;  for  in 
the  case  of  taxation,  that,  under  the  British  Constitution,  rests  not  on  some 
men,  but  on  ail  alike  ;  whereas  Mr.  Gladstone's  doctrine,  if  pressed  to  its 
extreme,  would  exclude  the  Jew  and  the  Quaker  from  office,  and,  therefore, 
would  be  a  hardship  to  some  only — not  to  all.  This  view  of  the  case  was 
certainly  correct,  and  again  the  statesman's  argument  was  undone. 

We  have  already  quoted  from  a  Chapter  of  Autobiography,  published 
by  Mr.  Gladstone  in  1868.  By  that  time  he  had  become  the  successful 
leader  in  the  movement  for  disestablishing  the  Irish  Church.  His  position 
at  the  time  was  so  utterly  contrarious  to  the  grounds  which  he  had  occupied 
aforetime  that  he  felt  constrained  to  publish  what  may  be  regarded  as  an 
amende  honor abie  to  the  British  public  and  all  mankind.  He  had  passed 
over  to  a  position  wholly  opposed  to  that  which  he  had  formerly  held,  and 
must  defend  the  change  as  well  as  he  might.     This  he  does  in  his  Ciiapter 


124  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

of  Autobiography.  The  work  is  essentially  an  explanation  of  the  processes 
by  which  British  society  and  British  polity  had  been  transformed,  and  how 
he  had  been  transformed  also.  The  introduction  to  his  treatise  is  suffi- 
ciently explanatory  : 

"  At  a  time,"  says  he,  "  when  the  Established  Church  of  Ireland  is  on  her 
trial  it  is  not  unfair  that  her  assailants  should  be  placed  upon  their  trial 
too  ;  most  of  all  if  they  have  at  one  time  been  her  sanguine  defenders.  But 
if  not  the  matter  of  the  indictment  against  them,  at  any  rate  that  of  their 
defense  should  be  kept  apart,  as  far  as  they  are  concerned,  from  the  public 
controversy,  that  it  may  not  darken  or  perplex  the  greater  issue.  It  is  in 
the  character  of  the  author  of  a  book  called  The  State  in  its  Relatiojis 
with  the  Church  that  I  offer  these  pages  to  those  who  may  feel  a  disposi- 
tion to  examine  them.  They  were  written  at  the  date  attached  to  them, 
but  their  publication  has  been  delayed  until  after  the  stress  of  the  general 
election." 

The  writer  then  goes  on  to  admit  the  great  and  glaring  change  which 
had  taken  place  in  himself  with  respect  to  the  Established  Church  in 
Ireland.  He  urged  that  this  change  must  be  accounted  for,  explained,  and 
understood  as  not  attributable  to  eccentricity  or  perversity  on  his  own  part, 
but  to  the  slow-moving  and  irresistible  changes  by  which  British  society,  and, 
indeed,  all  modern  history,  had  been  translated  into  another  mood  and  temper. 
Moreover,  Mr.  Gladstone  was  not  willing  that  the  public  question  then  on 
in  England  for  the  disestablishment  of  the  Irish  Church  should  suffer  in 
its  progress  and  solution  by  any  of  his  own  inconsistencies.  The  reader 
will  bear  in  mind  that  we  are  here  speaking  of  what  Mr.  Gladstone  wrote 
thirty  years  after  the  date  of  his  first  book. 

We  have  thus  sufficiently  pursued  the  story  of  the  statesman's  first 
appearance  in  literature,  of  the  nature  of  the  book  which  he  published,  of 
the  reception  which  it  met,  of  the  pains  which  the  author  must  afterward 
be  at  to  apologize  for  it  or  explain  it  away.  The  publication  of  the  book 
raised  Mr.  Gladstone  in  the  estimation  of  all  parties.  His  abilities  were 
recognized  in  the  intellectual  world,  and  if  his  arguments  were  condemned 
by  the  best  thinkers,  they  were  condemned  as  much  because  they  were  the 
product  of  the  past,  of  Toryism,  and  of  Oxford  University,  as  because  they 
were  the  utterance  of  a  rising  statesman.  With  him  as  a  person,  as  an 
author,  as  an  aspiring  politician,  nearly  all  the  intellectual  folk  of  Great 
Britain  sympathized,  notwithstanding  the  abhorrence  in  which  many  held 
his  doctrines.  We  may  thus,  at  the  beginning  of  the  year  1840,  contemplate 
William  E.  Gladstone  as  well  advanced  on  that  public  career  which  he  was 
destined  to  follow  so  long  and  so  well,  and  see  him  establishing  himself 
more  and  more  in  the  good  opinion  of  his  countrymen. 


THE    FREE-TRADE    TRANSFORMATION. 


125 


CHAPTER  VIII. 
The  Free-trade  Transformation. 

HE  political  condition  of  Great  Britain  during  the  first  three  or 
four  years  of  the  reign  of  Victoria  might  well  furnish  oppor- 
tunity to  a  scholarly  young  statesman  to  express  his  opinions 
and  policies  by  means  of  literature.  A  quiet  had  fallen  on 
England,  and  the  debates  in  Parliament  were,  for  the  most  part, 
factitious  and  irrelevant.  The  Reform  Bill,  and  the  results  of  that  measure, 
had  been  accepted  as  parts  of  the  British  Constitution,  Conservatism,  from 
having  bitterly  opposed  the  reformatory  legislation  which  was  effected  at 
the  beginning  of  the  decade,  passed  over  in  the  usual  manner  and  encamped 
in  the  abandoned  bivouac  of  Liberalism. 

Meanwhile,  ministerial  changes  had  been  going  forward.  Earl  Grey, 
after  having  had  the  distinguished,  almost  immortal,  honor  of  leading  the 
ministry  when  the  struggle  was  on  for  parliamentary  reform,  for  the  abolition 
of  slavery  throughout  the  British  empire,  and  the  enactment  of  the  Poor 
Law  amendment,  finally  went  out  of  office  in  July  of  1834.  William  Lamb, 
second  Viscount  Melbourne,  then  became  prime  minister  until  the  following 
November,  to  be  returned  to  the  same  position  in  April  of  1835.  The 
Melbourne  administration  lasted  for  six  years  and  four  months,  ending  in 
August  of  1 84 1.  The  period  of  this  ministry  was  almost  wholly  uneventful 
from  a  legislative  point  of  view.  Great  Britain  was  engaged  in  quietly 
adjusting  herself  to  the  reformed  conditions,  and  was  very  willing  that  the 
administration  should  remain  in  the  hands  of  a  statesman  more  noted  for 
negations  than  for  anything  else ;  more  indebted  for  his  reputation  to  his 
successful  induction  of  Queen  Victoria  into  her  duties  as  sovereign  than  for 
any  popularity  derived  from  his  policy  as  a  statesman.  His  talents  were  by 
no  means  brilliant.  His  oratory  was  weak  and  often  pointless.  Personally 
he  was  popular  and  acceptable.  His  skill  in  statecraft  lay  In  his  ability  to 
manage  the  subordinates  of  his  party  and  to  interest  them  with  his  wit  and 
other  attractive  personal  qualities. 

It  was  during  this  rather  colorless  period  of  the  Melbourne  ministry, 
just  after  the  accession  of  Victoria  and  just  before  his  own  marriage,  that 
Mr.  Gladstone  found  opportunity  to  indulge  his  passion  for  letters,  and  to 
promote  his  future  interests  In  politics  by  advocating  the  doctrines  discussed 
in  the  foregoing  chapter  relative  to  the  union  of  Church  and  State.  The 
time  now  came,  however,  for  a  change  in  the  tide.  Great  Britain  wearied 
of  the  Melbourne  ministry,  and  in  August  of  1841  that  administration  went 
to  pieces.     It  was  the  signal  for  the  beginning  of  a  new  epoch  In  parlla- 


126 


LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 


mentary  history  ;  and  of  this  history  Wilham  E.  Gladstone  had  now  become 
a  not  inconsiderable  part. 

Lord  Melbourne  was  succeeded  by  Sir  Robert  Peel,  who  had  been  out 
of  office  since  1835.  During"  this  interv^al  Mr.  Gladstone  had  followed  in  the 
wake  of  him  who  now  became  Prime  Minister  and  First  Lord  of  the 
Treasury.  At  the  first  it  could  not  be  known  what  changes  in  the  policy 
of  the  empire  Sir  Robert  was  disposed  to  promote.     Possibly  he  did  not 


SIR    ROBERT    PEEL. 


himself  see  clearly  the  course  of  events.  At  any  rate,  he  moved  cautiously 
on  coming  into  power,  examining  tentatively  the  ground  he  was  to  occupy; 
and  in  this  policy  he  was  supported  by  Mr.  Gladstone. 

In  September  of  184 1  a  lengthy  debate  occurred  in  Parliament  on  a 
motion  to  constitute  a  Committee  of  Supply.  On  this  proposition  Mr. 
Fielden  moved  to  amend  by  appointing  a  committee  to  investigate  the 
causes  of  the  existing  distress  before  attempting  to  relieve  it.     The  debate 


THE    FREE-TRADE    TRANSFORMATION.  12/ 

showed  a  strong  disposition  on  the  part  of  Parhament  to  ascertain  its  own 
whereabouts  with  relation  to  that  past  from  which  the  House  had  emerged, 
and  to  that  future  whicli  seemed  altogether  obscure. 

We  are  now  able  to  see  historically,  as  by  the  immutable  laws  of  cause 
and  effect,  how  great  industrial  and'  social  questions  must  follow  hard  after 
the  Reform  Bill  of  1832.  Among  such  questions  none  was  of  greater  impor- 
tance than  that  of  the  Corn  Laws.  Those  laws  touched  the  history  of 
Great  Britain  in  many  places,  and  extended  over  several  centuries  of  time. 
They  existed  as  a  part  of  the  system  which  the  empire  had  long  maintained 
in  favor  of  the  airricultural  classes.  The  oeneral  effect  of  the  Reform  Bill 
had  been  to  reduce  somewhat  the  overwhelming  influence  of  the  landed 
aristocracy,  and  correspondingly  to  enhance  the  influence  of  the  commercial 
and  manufacturing  classes.  The  Corn  Laws  were  involved  in  this  change ; 
and  the  question  of  amending  or  abolishing  them  could  hardly  long  be  post- 
poned. Besides,  certain  conditions  of  distress,  industrial  and  social,  had  now 
appeared  in  British  society.  It  were  hard  to  say  whether  such  distress  had 
long  existed  and  had  only  now  found  a  voice,  or  whether  the  accumulation 
of  populations  in  the  manufacturing  centers  and  the  pressure  of  the  whole 
people  on  the  means  of  subsistence  had  led  to  the  suffering  which  at  length 
cried  out  for  relief 

We  need  not  here  enter  elaborately  into  the  history  of  the  Corn  Laws 
of  Great  Britain.  That  would  carry  us  far  back,  at  least  to  the  early  part 
of  the  fifteenth  century.  The  laws  in  question  related  fundamentally  to  the 
export  and  import  of  wheat,  rye,  barley,  and  the  immediate  products  of 
some  of  these  grains.  Duties  were  imposed  on  the  exportation  and  trade 
in  these  cereals,  all  of  which  were  included  under  the  general  term  corn. 
Statute  after  statute  had  been  passed  through  a  period  of  about  three 
hundred  years,  regulating  the  corn  trade  and  determining  prices,  the  theory 
being  that  the  home  product  of  Great  Britain  was  necessary  in  toto  for  the 
well-being  of  the  people. 

The  act  of  the  year  1815  had  been  intended  to  fix  the  price  of 
wheat  in  the  British  markets  at  about  eighty  shillings  the  quarter.  In 
the  ensuing  twenty  years  the  laws  were  many  times  modified  in  the 
hope  of  maintaining  the  price  of  the  bread  materials  at  a  high  point,  in 
spite  of  natural  conditions.  In  1827  George  Canning  secured  the  pas- 
sage of  a  new  schedule  in  the  House  of  Commons,  lowering  the  duties 
and  expressing  the  tendency  of  legislation  toward  their  final  extinction. 
Two  years  previously  an  act  had  been  passed  permitting  the  importation 
of  wheat  from  North  America  at  a  duty  of  five  shillings  per  quarter, 
without  respect  to  the  home  price  of  wheat  in  Great  Britain.  The  law 
of  Canning  had  been  one  shilling  the  quarter  on  wheat,  when  the  home 
price  was  above  seventy  shillings,   and  an  increased  duty  of  two  shillings 


T28  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

for  every  point  that  the  price  should  fall  below  sixty-nine  shillings  the 
quarter. 

These  rules  of  trade  were  difficult  of  application,  and  frequently  of  little 
effect.  The  laws  became  more  and  more  unsatisfactory,  and  the  reformed 
Conservative  government  undertook,  in  1 841,  to  revise  the  schedule.  On 
the  9th  of  February  in  that  year  Sir  Robert  Peel  proposed  a  new  sliding 
scale  of  duties  on  corn,  beginning  with  a  duty  of  twenty  shillings,  to  be  levied 
when  the  home  price  of  wheat  was  fifty-one  shillings  the  quarter,  with  a  re- 
duction to  one  shilling  when  the  home  price  should  rise  to  seventy-three 
shillings  the  quarter.  The  theory  was  that  by  the  sliding  scale  the  price  of 
the  various  erains  to  which  the  law  referred  miorht  be  maintained  at  a  hio-h 
point  and  with  comparatively  little  fluctuation  therefrom. 

It  was  with  this  important  economic  proposition  that  the  stormy  legis- 
lative history  of  the  decade  was  introduced.  It  was  the  intention  of  Sir 
Robert  Peel  to  precipitate  a  discussion  of  the  Corn  Laws  as  such.  He 
declared  in  so  many  words  that  he  regarded  the  crisis  as  not  unfavorable 
for  the  consideration  of  the  bottom  principles  of  the  laws.  He  spoke  of  the 
conditions  present  in  the  country,  saying  that  the  foreign  crops  in  sight 
had  not  been  such  as  to  alarm  the  farming  interest  of  England.  There  had 
been  quiet  in  the  country  during  the  period  of  the  recess.  Legislation 
might  be  resumed  with  no  apprehension  of  popular  violence  ;  for  there  was 
none.  The  House  might  proceed  with  calmness  and  moderation  to  con- 
sider any  measure  which  had  for  its  end  the  solution  of  the  problem 
involved  in  the  duties  on  corn. 

The  event  showed,  however,  that  Sir  Robert  had  drawn  on  his  imagi- 
nation rather  than  on  the  facts  in  the  foregoing  statements.  The  echo  of 
his  speech  had  hardly  died  away  before  the  popular  young  queen  had  been 
hooted  at  one  of  the  London  theaters.  That  was  a  signal  that  the  ministry 
was  imperiled.  The  country  came  into  a  condition  of  feverish  excitement. 
Five  days  after  Sir  Robert  Peel  had  introduced  his  proposition  Lord  John 
Russell,  taking  advantage  of  a  parliamentary  opportunity,  thrust  before  the 
House  of  Commons  an  amendment,  which  was  really  a  substitute.  In  these 
terms:  "That  this  House,  considering  the  evils  which  have  been  caused  by 
the  present  Corn  Laws,  and  especially  by  the  fluctuation  of  the  graduated, 
or  sliding  scale,  is  not  prepared  to  adopt  the  measure  of  her  majesty's 
government,  which  is  founded  on  the  same  principles,  and  is  likely  to  be 
attended  by  similar  results." 

If  this  substitute  should  prevail  It  would  amount  to  the  overthrow  of 
the  ministry.  Indeed,  Lord  John  Russell  had  that  end  in  view.  The  Con- 
servative leaders,  however,  planted  themselves  with  the  panoply  of  party 
contrivance  around  them  in  the  way  of  the  movement.  Gladstone  took  up 
the  cause  of  the  premier,  and  spoke  with  great  plausibility  in   favor  of  the 


niE    FREE-TRADE    TRANSFORMATION.  1 29 

ministerial  proposition.  He  denied  that  Sir  Robert  Peel's  measure  was 
identical  with  that  of  Lord  John  Russell,  or  even  like  it.  The  speaker  was 
more  careful  than  his  master  in  regard  to  the  existing  distress,  which  he 
admitted,  but  laid  to  the  charge  of  nature.  For,  he  said,  the  crops  had 
failed,  and  no  rate  of  import  duties  could  prevail  against  such  a  disaster. 
For  four  years  successively  there  had  been  a  comparative  failure  in  the 
production  of  wheat,  barley,  and  rye.  The  high  prices  of  food  under  such 
circumstances  could  not  be  wholly  obviated  under  any  contrivance  of  man. 
The  proposition  of  the  government  was  in  nearly  all  respects  different  from 
that  of  Lord  Russell,  and  markedly  superior  thereto.  The  measure  pro- 
posed by  the  premier  was  temperate,  rational,  conservative.  The  country 
might  safely,  under  such  a  measure,  expect  an  equalization  in  prices  and  a 
betterment  of  social  and  domestic  conditions.  The  debate  waxed  hot;  but 
when  it  came  to  a  vote  the  government  was  sustained  by  a  large  majority. 
Lord  Russell's  substitute  was  vigorously  rejected. 

Nevertheless,  public  discontent  was  everywhere.  Sir  Robert  Peel,  in 
his  optimistic  misrepresentation  of  the  industrial  condition  of  England, 
incurred  much  ridicule  and  sarcasm.  The  animosity  against  him  broke  out 
here  and  there  in  tumults,  denunciations,  and  burnings  in  effigy.  The 
ministry,  however,  was  strong  and  unyielding.  Only  ten  days  after  the 
Russell  episode  Mr.  Villiers,  a  free  trader  pure  and  simple,  offered  a  resolu- 
tion in  the  House  for  the  absolute  repeal  of  the  existing  Corn  Laws.  This 
struck  down  to  the  heart  of  the  question.  Since  it  was  a  measure  of  disturb- 
ance, a  thing  always  frightful  to  a  British  Parliament,  it  was  rejected  b)-  a 
majority  of  more  than  two  thirds. 

Something,  however,  had  to  be  done;  for  there  was  a  deficit  of  nearly 
three  million  pounds,  and  the  existing  system  of  tariff  duties  on  articles  of 
consumption  was  already  strained  to  the  point  of  breaking.  It  is  in  the 
nature  of  such  situations  that  they  suggest  an  income  tax.  Property,  in  the 
day  of  final  resort,  is  summoned  to  give  back  a  part  of  wdiat  it  has  taken 
away.  Sir  Robert  Peel  espoused  the  principle  of  a  tax  on  incomes.  He 
presented  a  scheme  for  raising  three  million  seven  hundred  thousand  pounds, 
at  the  same  time  indicating  his  purpose,  should  his  method  be  adopted,  of 
reducing  the  duties  of  the  existing  schedule  to  a  much  lower  figure.  The 
main  feature  of  the  scheme  was  the  levying  of  a  sevenpence  rate  on  all 
incomes  over  a  hundred  and  fifty  pounds  for  a  period  of  three  years.  The 
Whigs,  under  the  lead  of  Lord  John  Russell,  entered  the  arena  against  the 
ministerial  plan,  but  could  not  prevail. 

As  soon  as  the  Income  Tax  Bill  was  passed  government  went  forward 

to  carry  out  its  pledge  of  reducing  and  abolishing  duties.     The  idea  was  to 

relieve  the  manufacturing  industries  of  Great  Britain,  and  to  popularize  the 

government  with  them,  by  reducing,  minimizing,  or  wholly  removing  those 

9 


130  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

duties  by  which  the  agricultural  interest  had  so  long  been  favored.  Nor 
will  the  American  reader  fail  to  observe  in  this  situation,  partibus  reverses, 
the  exact  counterpart  of  the  tariff  legislation  in  the  United  States  in  the 
decade  following  the  first  accession  of  Cleveland  to  the  presidency.  An 
examination  of  the  ministerial  schedule,  which  Mr.  Gladstone  is  said  to  have 
prepared  and  to  have  put  into  Sir  Robert  Peel's  hands  for  introduction  into 
the  Commons,  showed  that  a  large  number  of  the  articles  hitherto  under 
duty  were  to  be  changed  to  the  free  list,  and  that  the  duties  on  a  still  greater 
number  had  been  heavily  reduced.  The  measure  was  virtually  the  proto- 
type of  the  American  Wilson  Bill  of  1893-94.  The  free  traders  in  Parlia- 
ment shouted  with  derisive  laughter  to  see,  as  they  said,  the  ministry  of 
Great  Britain  driven  over  by  public  opinion  to  the  position  held  by  the 
Radicals. 

A  long  debate  ensued,  marked  with  stormy  passages,  in  the  course  of 
which  Mr.  Gladstone  stood  as  the  champion  of  what  was  virtually  his 
own  measure.  The  debates  reported  in  Hansard  and  the  A7in2ial  Register 
for  this  period  show  that  the  statesman  (for  we  may  now  call  him  such) 
spoke  at  greater  length  or  less  no  fewer  than  a  hundred  and  twenty-nine 
times  during  the  session  of  1841-42,  and  by  far  the  greater  number  of  his 
efforts  were  directed  to  the  question  of  tariff  reform  as  expressed  in  the 
pending  ministerial  bill. 

We  shall  here  for  the  moment  neglect  the  general  political  and  domes- 
tic conditions  in  Eno^land,  and  gro  forward  to  the  end  of  the  contest  over 
the  Corn  Laws.  The  fate  of  those  lono-standinor  interferences  with  the 
natural  conditions  of  trade  was  at  hand.  The  debate  over  the  tariff 
schedules  was  ever  and  anon  deflected  to  that  which  was  the  bottom  ques- 
tion, namely,  the  advisability  of  abolishing  utterly  the  restrictions  on  the 
commerce  in  the  cereals  grown  in  England.  The  manufactures  of  the 
realm  were  seriously  impaired.  It  was  a  periodical  epoch  of  distress. 
Everything  seemed  to  go  to  the  advantage  of  those  who  sought  to  make 
Great  Britain  an  absolutely  free-trade  country.  Mr,  Gladstone  at  this 
time,  having  become  virtually  the  ablest  speaker  among  the  ministerial 
benches,  had  devolved  on  him  the  onerous  duty  of  explaining  away  the 
suffering  and  discontent  of  the  country.  He  was  much  more  concessive 
than  his  leader.  Sir  Robert  Peel,  in  admitting  the  hard  conditions  of  the 
times.  The  session  of  1842  expired,  and  that  of  1843  began.  The  queen's 
speech,  devised  to  meet  the  exigencies  of  the  existing  ministry,  spoke 
thankfully  of  the  labors  of  her  Parliament,  optimistically  of  the  condition 
of  her  people,  and  quite  hopefully  of  the  future. 

The  address  from  the  throne  called  forth  serious  opposition.  There 
was  a  proposition  to  consider  the  speech  of  her  majesty  in  committee  of 
the  whole.     Should  such  a  motion   prevail  It  would   imply  a  want   of  confi- 


THE    FREE-TRADE    TRANSFORMATION. 


131 


dence  in  the  government.  A  debate  ensued,  in  the  course  ot  which  Mr. 
Gladstone  defended  the  poHcy  of  the  ministry,  but  at  the  same  time  held  out 
the  lure  that  the  differences  between  the  two  parties  in  Parliament — parties 
which  had  recently  combined  to  the  number  of  more  than  three  hundred 
votes  against  the  proposition  to  abolish  the  Corn  Laws — were  not  so  great 
but  that  all  conservative  lovers  of  their  country  might  join  in  relaxing,  as 
much  as  might  be  expedient,  the  prevalent  system  of  duties.  The  speaker 
made  a  politic  and  rather  tentative  address,  warning  the  House  not  to  take 
such  action  as  should  give  a  great  shock  to  the  commercial  industries 
of  England,  such  as  would  manifestly  be  produced  by  the  total  abolition 
of  the  Corn  Laws.  The  speech,  as  a  whole,  was  a  moderate  plea  for  such 
limited  protection  as  still  held  its  place  in  the  industrial  and  commercial 
relations  of  Great  Britain,  and  as  had  not  yet  been  exterminated  from  the 
current  theory  of  political  economy.  Finally,  he  charged  the  opposition 
with  inconsistency  in  this,  that  the  Whig  party,  whether  in  power  or  out  of 
power,  had  as  much  as  the  Conservatives  neglected — until  obliged  by  the 
recent  distress  of  the  country — to  propose  or  promote  any  salutary  meas- 
ures of  trade  reform. 

The   result   of  these   debates   was   another   triumph   for   the   ministry. 


CORN-LAW    AGITATION. 


1^2  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

Later  in  the  session  the  project  of  abolishing  the  Corn  Laws  was  once  and 
again  renew^ed  ;  and  it  might  be  observed  with  alarm  by  the  dominant  party 
that  the  ministerial  majority  wavered  from  time  to  time,  was  reduced  at 
intervals  on  the  votes,  and  became  sensitive  to  the  distress  of  the  country 
and  the  outside  agitation.  Still  the  ministry  of  Sir  Robert  Peel  held  on. 
It  was  supported  by  the  fully  represented  and  pow^erfully  organized 
landed  aristocracy  of  England,  while  the  opposition  to  the  current  policy 
came  up  from  the  clamorous  but  rather  chaotic  manufacturing  centers,  where 
opinion  had  not  yet  become  consolidated  in  favor  of  free  trade. 

We  shall  here  return  to  consider  the  outside  social  reasons  for  the 
political  disturbances  of  these  times.  We  have  now^  entered  fully  upon  the 
great  Epoch  of  Chartism,  a  crisis  in  which  modern  English  democracy 
discovered  its  power  and  forged  its  way  to  the  front.  The  career  of  William 
E.  Gladstone  cannot  be  well  estimated  and  interpreted  without  noting  the 
oncoming  conditions  which  prevailed  coincidently  with  his  rise  to  influ- 
ence in  Parliament  and  to  national  and  international  reputation. 

It  was  in  the  year  1838  that  the  Chartists  first  paraded  what  they 
called  the  People's  Charter.  It  is  believed  that  the  brief  code  of  principles 
so  denominated  w^as  prepared  by  Daniel  O'Connell.  There  was  an 
enumeration  of  six  fundamental  things  which  the  masses  of  the  English 
people  were  said  to  demand.     These  were  : 

1.  A  demand  for  universal  suffrage  ; 

2.  A  demand  for  an  annual  Parliament  ; 

3.  A  demand  for  the  right  to  vote  by  ballot  ; 

4.  A  demand  for  the  abolition  of  the  property  qualification  then  exist- 
ing for  membership  in  the  House  of  Commons  ; 

5.  A  demand  that  members  of  Parliament  be  paid  a  salary  for  their 
services  ; 

6.  A  demand  for  the  division  of  the  United  Kingdom  into  equal 
electoral  districts  on  the  basis  of  population. 

Relative  to  these  demands  or  principles  of  political  progress  we  should 
remark  that  the  appeal  for  universal  suffrage  signified  only  manJwod 
suffrage,  and  had  no  respect  to  the  political  rights  of  women.  The  third 
principle,  or  right  to  vote  by  ballot,  had  respect  to  the  secret,  zuritten  ballot 
as  against  the  method  of  voting  viva  voce,  which  was  then  in  vogue.  The 
latter  method  had  always  been  used  by  the  dominant  aristocracy  as  a  means 
of  suppressing  the  real  voice  of  the  under  man.  For  how  could  the  under 
man  express  his  preference  at  the  polls  if  he  had  to  do  so  in  the  presence 
of  the  country  squire,  who  was  virtually  his  master  }  Such  is  the  influence 
of  property,  and  of  money  in  particular,  that  a  free  ballot  must  mean,  the 
whole  world  over,  the  secret  ballot  by  which  the  under  man  is  able  to  be 
counted  without    fear   of  the    consequences.      How    hardly  did    civilization 


THE    FREE-TRADE    TRANSFORMATION. 


^33 


discover  the  ballot  box,  and  how  more  than  hardly  has  that  ballot  box  been 
made  a  reality  for  the  legitimate  expression  of  the  wishes  of  the  people  ! 

The  Chartists  put  their  charter  on  their  banners  and  beean  to  ao-itate. 
Of  course  the  masses  followed  in  the  wake  of  the  proclamation.  There  was 
a  general  turbulence  in  the  seabed  of  British  life.  In  the  retrospect  we 
see  how  reasonable  and  moderate  were  the  demands  of  the  Chartist  leaders  ; 
and  yet,  such  was  the  hostility  of  the  governing  classes  toward  this  meek 
proclamation  of  republicanism  that  one  might  well  imagine,  from  the  political' 
literature  of  the  day,  that  the  end  of  all  things  was  at  hand — that  both  man 
and  nature  were  about  to  be  engulfed  in  the  abyss  of  anarchy.  Several 
remarkable  personages  led  the  political  insurrection.  O'Connell  himself 
was  charged  with  being  the  author  of  the  Chartist  platform.  His  country- 
man, Feargus  O'Connor,  became  the  most  popular  as  well  as  the  most  vehe- 
ment of  the  agitators.  The  poet  and  phil- 
anthropist, Thomas  Cooper,  was  another. 
Henry  Vincent,  well  known  in  America  as  a 
lecturer  in  the  eighth  decade,  was  another. 
Some  of  these  were  seized  and  imprisoned. 
All  were  persecuted.  But  the  volume  of 
agitation  rolled  and  swelled  and  broke, 
until   at    length    the    Melbourne   ministry 

tottered   and    went   down.       Then   it   was  -"'    v, -'""    ¥^?5^5108^  ^    Hfl 

that  Sir  Robert  Peel,  Gladstone's  friend 
and  ideal  leader,  came  to  the  fore  and 
brought  his  able  lieutenant  with  him. 

We  may  note  another  circumstance  of 
this  time  as  a  matter  of  interest  in  that  his- 
tory of  which  Mr.  Gladstone  was  about  to        albert,  prince  of  saxe-coburg- 
become  a  great  part.     This  was  the   mar-  gotha,  prince  consort. 

riage    of  the   queen.      At    the   opening   of 

Parliament  in  1840  Victoria  appeared  in  person  and  announced  her  purpose 
to  be  married  to  her  cousin,  Prince  Albert  of  Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.  The 
young  majesty  said  that  she  was  intending  to  secure  the  happiness  of  her 
people  and  her  own.  Common  fame  had  it  that  the  queen  and  the  prince 
were  really  in  love — a  rare  thing  in  those  high  courts  where  monarchy  sits 
and  contrives  in  what  way  it  shall  best  perpetuate  itself  at  the  expense 
of  nature  and  in  mockery  of  the  human  heart.  The  marriage  w'as  accord- 
ingly celebrated,  and  the  prince  consort  became  an  influential  factor  in 
the  current  domestic,  civil,  and  artistic  life  of  Great  Britain.  He  did  his 
part  well  for  a  little  more  than  twenty  years.  Albert  was  always  a  man 
of  moderation  and  good  taste.  He  and  the  queen,  or  rather  the  queen 
and  he,  lived  happily  together.     Their  family  grew  and  multiplied.     Great 


134  LIFE    AND    TIMES    UE    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

Britain  was  honored  with  a  virtuous  home  at  the  head  of  the  State,  a 
thing  not  known  for  a  long  time  in  the  annals  of  the  empire.  Albert 
became  the  patron  of  arts  and  industries ;  sympathized  with  the  British 
public;  smoothed  not  a  little  the  gnarled  forehead  of  John  Bull;  and 
finalK" — which  was  of  great  importance — attended  in  politics  strictly  to 
his  own  business.  He  was  known  as  an  outside  privy  council  ;  but  the 
influence  which  he  must  necessarily  exercise  over  his  wife  was  never 
aijainst  the  dictates  of  reason  and  conscience,  and  never  adverse  to  the 
interests  of  the  English  nation.  The  queen  thought  him  the  ideal  man,  and 
came  as  near  to  adoration  as  was  possible  with  her  unenthusiastic,  prudent, 
and  almost  wholly  neutral  nature. 

An  incident  of  the  parliamentary  session  of  1842  was  Mr.  Gladstone's 
opposition  to  a  reduction  in  the  duty  on  imported  sugar.  The  mood  of  his 
mind  may  be  discovered  by  examining  his  argument  on  this  subject.  He 
was  prudent  enough  to  discern  the  rising  and  Inevitably  predominant  senti- 
ment of  free  trade.  The  existing  duties  on  foreign  sugar  were  not  in  the 
nature  of  free  trade,  and  their  continuance  would  be  Inconsistent  with  what 
was  about  to  be  accomplished  in  the  abolition  of  the  Corn  Laws,  Glad- 
stone therefore  defended  the  suear  duties  on  the  ofround  that  the  reduction 
of  the  same  would  encourage  the  opening  of  the  slave  trade  again — this  for 
the  reason  that  cheap  sugar  would  signify  cheap  labor  In  Demerara  and 
Jamaica;  and  cheap  labor  would  tempt  the  planters  to  reinforce  the  slave 
system  of  cultivation. 

The  next  measure  with  which  the  name  of  Gladstone  was  publicly 
associated  was  a  bill  proposed  by  himself  for  the  abolition  of  the  Interdict 
on  the  exportation  of  machinery.  The  law  to  prohibit  such  exportation 
had  been  passed  In  the  preceding  reign.  It  was,  of  course,  strictly  accord- 
ant with  the  Corn  Laws,  being  a  part  of  the  general  Interference  with  the 
natural  laws  of  trade.  It  was  Intended  to  regulate  the  price  of  machinery 
by  restricting  the  sale  of  It  to  the  home  market.  Mr.  Gladstone  had  now 
become  President  of  the  Board  of  Trade.  In  that  relation  he  was  the 
successor  of  the  Earl  of  Ripon,  whom  he  succeeded  In  the  Peel  ministry.  It 
was  claimed  by  the  author  of  the  bill  that  the  existing  statute  had  become 
practically  inoperative.  It  appeared  that,  notwithstanding  the  law,  the 
foreign  trade  in  English  machinery  had  been  continued.  At  all  events, 
Gladstone  succeeded  In  carrying  his  bill  through  Parliament.  This  was  per- 
haps as  Important  a  measure  as  any  which  he  promoted  In  the  parliamen- 
tary session  of  1843. 

In  the  meantime,  however,  he  began  to  take  a  larger  view  of  the  needs 
and  tendencies  of  British  society.  Some  of  his  biographers  have  pointed  to 
this  period  as  the  time  when  Mr.  Gladstone  began  to  discuss  those  social 
and   educational   questions  with  which  he  was  subsequently  so  much  con- 


THE    FREE-TRADE    TRANSFORMATION.  1 35 

cerned.  It  was  in  the  year  1843  that  he  was  invited  to  deHver  the  address 
at  the  opening-  of  the  collegiate  institution  of  Liverpool.  His  speech  on  the 
occasion  was  carefully  prepared,  and  showed  once  more  the  strongly  reli- 
gious bias  of  his  life.  The  nature  of  Gladstone  being  large  and  sincere,  and 
his  character  aspiring,  he  had  become  in  boyhood  deeply  imbued  with  the 
prevailing  religious  system,  and  this  tendency  had  been  so  strongly  confirmed 
in  his  whole  educational  career  that  the  old  forces  of  his  youth  would  not 
readily  loose  their  grasp  on  the  now  adult  man. 

In  the  beo^inninor  of  his  address  on  the  occasion  referred  to  he  advo- 
cated,  almost  vehemently,  the  maintenance  of  religion  as  a  part  of  the 
educational  system.  Addressing  himself  to  the  regents  he  said :  "  We 
believe  that  if  you  could  erect  a  system  which  should  present  to  mankind 
all  the  branches  of  knowledge  save  the  one  that  is  essential,  you  would  only 
be  building  up  a  tower  of  Babel  which,  when  you  had  completed  it,  would 
be  the  more  signal  in  its  fall,  and  which  would  bury  those  who  had  raised  it 
in  its  ruins.  We  all  believe  that  if  )'ou  can  take  a  human  being  in  his  youth, 
and  if  you  can  make  him  an  accomplished  man  in  natural  philosophy,  in 
mathematics,  or  in  the  knowledge  necessary  for  the  profession  of  a  mer- 
chant, a  lawyer,  or  a  physician;  that  if  in  any  or  all  of  these  endowments 
}'ou  could  form  his  mind — yes,  if  you  could  endow  him  with  the  science  of 
a  Newton  and  so  send  him  forth — and  if  you  had  concealed  from  him,  or 
rather  had  not  sfiven  him  a  knowledo^e  and  love  of  the  Christian  faith — he 
would  go  forth  into  the  world,  able  indeed  with  reference  to  those  purposes 
of  science,  successful  with  the  accumulation  of  wealth  for  the  multiplication 
of  more,  but  '  poor,  and  miserable,  and  blind,  and  naked  '  with  reference  to 
everything  that  constitutes  the  true  and  sovereign  purpose  of  our  existence 
■ — nay  worse,  worse — with  respect  to  the  sovereign  purpose — than  if  he  had 
still  remained  in  the  ignorance  which  all  commiserate,  and  which  it  is  the 
object  of  this  institution  to  assist  in  removing." 

The  traces  of  Mr.  Gladstone's  origin  amonof  the  commercial  classes 
are  to  be  seen  in  nearly  the  whole  of  his  career.  He  always  spoke  with 
more  zeal  and  more  knowledge  on  commercial  questions  than  on  any  other 
phase  of  the  industrial  life.  By  the  year  1844  the  railway  system  of  Great 
Britain  had  sufficiently  grown  to  claim  the  attention  of  Parliament.  It  was 
the  business  of  the  Board  of  Trade,  and  in  particular  of  the  president  of 
that  body,  to  consider  with  attention  the  rising  interests  of  the  British  rail- 
ways. It  was  at  the  session  of  this  year  that  Gladstone  brought  forward  a 
bill  providing  for  the  purchase,  after  a  period  of  fifteen  years,  of  any  rail- 
ways whose  rights  might  be  acquired  during  the  period  named. 

Already  some  of  the  railways  had  cut  down  their  rates.  All  of  them 
had  adopted  the  principle  of  classification  in  the  matter  of  fares.  The 
trains  were  run  as  first-class,  as  second-class,  as  third-class,  etc.     The  bill  of 


136  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

Mr.  Gladstone  was  of  a  kind  to  enforce  itself  as  a  sort  of  charter  or  consti- 
tution upon  all  the  railways  that  should  be  built  after  the  passage  of  the 
measure.  A  strong  trace  of  a  future  leaning  toward  democracy  might  be 
seen  in  that  provision  of  the  bill  which  compelled  railways  to  run  at  least 
one  daily  train,  at  a  speed  of  not  less  than  twelve  miles,  for  the  local 
accommodation  of  the  common  people,  at  the  rate  of  one  penny  per  mile 
for  each  passenger,  to  whom  was  allowed  an  amount  of  baggage  weighing 
fifty  pounds  without  extra  charge.  Children  under  three  years  of  age  were 
to  be  carried  free,  and  those  between  three  years  and  twelve  years  at  half 
the  price  for  adults. 

The  companies  of  the  railways  already  in  existence  set  themselves  to 
prevent  the  passage  of  this  popular  measure,  but  their  opposition  was 
unavailing.  If  any  railway  should  refuse  to  be  governed  by  the  provisions 
thus  made,  then  such  railway  became  purchasable  by  the  Board  of  Trade, 
and  might  be  paid  for  within  a  period  of  twenty-five  years  out  of  the  profits, 
at  a  rate  not  exceeding  ten  per  cent  per  annum  of  the  purchase  price. 

It  is  to  this  year,  1844,  that  another  significant  piece  of  legislation 
favored  by  Gladstone  must  be  referred.  It  was  the  first,  perhaps,  of  those 
measures  which  betokened  a  dawning  liberalism  in  his  opinions.  Hope- 
fully enough,  the  liberalism  appeared  against  the  principles  of  that  strict 
orthodoxy  in  which  he  had  been  reared  and  to  which  his  first  book  had 
been  so  ardently  devoted.  It  had  happened  in  England  that  not  a  few  of 
the  Nonconformists  who,  far  back  in  the  revolutionary  times,  had  begun  as 
Presbyterians,  had  now  ended  by  becoming  Unitarian  in  belief.  Religion- 
ists of  such  profession  had  in  the  long  interval  acquired  many  properties. 
Such  properties  had  been  transmitted  from  age  to  age,  while  those  who 
owned  and  controlled  them  were  gradually  passing  to  new  grounds  in  the 
matter  of  religious  profession.  To  the  Church  of  England  it  was  somewhat 
tolerable  that  men  should  be  dissenting  Trinitarians,  such  as  they  of  the 
Presbyterian  faith,  but  quite  intolerable  that  Unitarians  should  be  seized  of 
those  ecclesiastical  properties  which  had  come  down  from  an  ancestry  more 
nearly  orthodox. 

The  properties  referred  to  were  in  many  cases  charitable  in  character. 
Lady  Hewley  had  given  to  the  Calvinists  an  establishment  which  had 
passed  to  Unitarian  control,  and  so  passing,  the  managers  were  expelled 
from  possession  and  occupancy!  At  the  session  of  1844  a  bill  was  before 
Parliament  to  ratify  and  confirm  all  such  properties  to  the  rightful  owners, 
subject  only  to  the  restriction  that  the  ownership  had  been  undisturbed  for 
a  period  of  twenty  years  preceding.  It  was  in  the  discussion  of  this  bill 
that  Mr.  Gladstone  appeared  in  the  affirmative.  He  stood  up  boldly  in  the 
Commons  and  declared  that,  while  his  own  allegiance  to  the  Church  of 
Enoland  and  her  riorhts  was  unshaken  and  unchallenoreable,  he  nevertheless 


THE    FREE-TRADE    TRANSFORMATION. 


^37 


MAYNOOTH   COLLEGE. 


regarded  the  pending  proposition  simply  as  a  matter  of  common  justice 
which,  independently  of  all  creed  and  abstract  consideration  of  reason  and 
theory,  should  be  adopted.  The  Unitarians  ought  to  be  defended  in  their 
natural  and  inalienable  rights  as  well  as  they  of  orthodox  belief  The 
address  of  the  President  of  the  Board  of  Trade  produced  something  of  a 
sensation  in  the  Commons,  and  from  that  day  predictions  began  to  be  heard 
to  the  effect  that  William  E.  Gladstone  might  some  day  become  the  cham- 
pion of  equal  rights  to  all  religions  whatsoever. 

This  foregiving,  indeed,  of  the  liberalizing  tendency  in  Gladstone  was 
destined  soon  to  be  confirmed  in  a  striking  crisis  of  his  parliamentary  life. 
Now  it  was  that  the  question  arose  of  voting  a  sum  of  money  for  the 
improvement  of  the  Catholic  college  of  Maynooth,  in  Ireland.  This  insti- 
tution is  situated  in  a  village  of  the  same  name  in  the  County  of  Kildare, 
Province  of  Leinster,  about  fifteen  miles  distant  from  Dublin,  The  college 
was  instituted  by  the  Irish  Parliament  in  1765,  with  the  design  of  furnishing 
a  seat  of  learning  for  the  education  of  Roman  Catholic  clergymen.  In  the 
time  of  William  Pitt  the  question  of  supporting  the  institution  by  grants 
of  money  under  parliamentary  act  was  agitated,  and  a  measure  of  dubious 
justice  and  little  efficacy  was  adopted.  The  time  had  now  arrived  when  the 
college  must   be   supported  or  must  cease   to   perform   its   functions.      New 


138  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

buildinos  were  required,  which  the  management  was  unable  to  supply.  The 
people  who  patronized  Maynooth  were  taxpayers,  as  any  other,  and  subjects 
of  the  British  crown,  but  received  no  benefit  in  return. 

At  the  first  parliamentary  session  of  1845  a  measure  called  the  May- 
nooth Improvement  Bill  was  introduced  into  the  House  of  Commons.  As 
matter  of  fact,  the  bill  went  forward  regularly  through  its  several  readings, 
and  with  much  debate,  until  1846,  when  the  act  was  passed  granting  an 
annual  gift  of  twenty-six  thousand  pounds  for  the  support  of  the  Royal 
Catholic  College,  and  in  particular  for  the  erection  of  the  new  Gothic  build- 
ings which  the  institution  has  ever  since  occupied.  The  measure  was  of  a 
kind  to  bring  Mr.  Gladstone  into  a  close  place.  For  how  could  he,  who 
had  written  The  State  in  its  Relations  with  tJie  Church,  support  from  his 
ministerial  position  a  bill  for  the  proposed  grant  to  a  Catholic  university  1 
He  had  held  that  the  religious  establishment,  whatever  it  may  be,  is  a  legiti- 
mate organ  of  the  government,  and  must  be  supported  to  the  exclusion  of 
all  other  forms  of  ecclesiastical  organization.  Should  he  now  take  the 
opposite  view,  and,  under  the  impulses  of  a  broader  humanity,  adopt  the 
motto,  Tros  Tyriusve  mihi  nnllo  discrimine  agetnr?  Would  not  all 
men  say  that  for  the  sake  of  his  place  in  the  ministry  his  opinions  had 
gone  by  vendue  to  the  highest  competing  interest  1  In  reality  Gladstone's 
opinions  had  changed  to  the  extent  that  his  conscience  now  required 
him  to  support  the  Maynooth  Bill.  That  he  could  do  only  in  one  way 
without  laying  himself  liable  to  the  charge  of  interested  tergiversation. 
The  one  way  was  to  resign  his  place  in  the  ministry.  That  done  he  might 
honorably  stand  on  the  floor  of  the  House  and  declare — which  was  indeed 
the  truth — that  he  had  changed,  but  changed  from  conscientious  motives  and 
to  his  own  hurt. 

This  course  he  boldly  pursued.  At  the  opening  of  the  session  of  1845 
he  resigned  his  place  in  the  ministry,  and  made  full  explanation  of  his 
reasons  for  doing  so.  If  he  should  favor — so  he  said — an  increase  in  the 
endowments  of  Maynooth,  and  perhaps  go  so  far  as  to  favor  the  support  of 
nonsectarian  colleges,  he  should  go  against  the  opinions  which  he  had 
advocated  in  his  work  on  Church  and  State.  He  acknowledged  the  falli- 
bility of  his  judgment  as  expressed  in  that  book.  "  It  has  been  my  convic- 
tion," said  he,  "  that  although  I  w^as  not  to  fetter  my  judgment  as  a  member 
of  Parliament  by  a  reference  to  abstract  theories,  yet,  on  the  other  hand,  it 
was  absolutely  due  to  the  public  and  due  to  myself  that  I  should,  so  far  as 
in  me  lay,  place  myself  in  a  position  to  form  an  opinion  upon  a  matter  of 
so  great  importance  that  should  not  only  be  actually  free  from  all  bias  or 
leaning  with  respect  to  any  consideration  w^iatsoever,  but  an  opinion  that 
should  be  unsuspected.  On  that  account,  I  have  taken  a  course  most  pain- 
ful to  myself  in  respect  to   personal    feelings,  and   have   separated    myself 


THE    FREE-TRADE    TRANSFORMATION. 


139 


from  men  with  whom  and  under  whom  I  have  long  acted  in  pubhc 
hfe,  and  of  whom  I  am  bound  to  say,  although  I  have  now  no  longer 
the  honor  of  serving  my  most  gracious  sovereign,  that  I  continue  to 
regard  them  with  unaltered  sentiments  both  of  public  regard  and  private 
attachment." 

These  sentiments  were  emphatically  honorable  to  him  who  uttered 
them.  They  set  him  right  before  Parliament  and  the  country.  They 
showed  him  to  be  a  conscientious  and  thoroughgoing  man,  capable  of  self- 
sacritice  in  the  cause  of  truth  as  he  understood  it.  His  speech  on  the  sub- 
ject was  warmly  applauded  by  his  friends,  and  respected  by  the  opposition. 
The  speaker  added  to  his  explanation  some  conciliatory  things  about  the 
ministry,  and  in  particular  about  Sir  Robert  Peel.  The  latter  responded  to 
Gladstone's  address  in  fitting  words,  pronouncing  a  eulogium  on  him,  and 
declaring  him  to  be  a  man  of  honor,  whose  services  he  should  lose  with  the 
greatest  regret.  In  like  manner  Lord  John  Russell  expressed  his  appreci- 
ation of  the  motives  and  high  character  of  the  retiring  minister.  In  fact, 
the  whole  transaction  was  of  a  kind  to  improve  not  a  little  our  estimate  of 
the  current  political  morality  of  Great  Britain  as  reflected  in  the  lives  and 
actions  of  some  of  her  leading  men. 

Thus  passed  Mr.  Gladstone  out  of  the  ministry  of  Sir  Robert  Peel. 
While  the  Maynooth  Bill  was  under  discussion  he  appeared  openly  as  its 
advocate.  This  was  a  thing  that  a  man  of  profound  political  intuition  and 
prevision  of  things  to  come  might  have  done  for  policy.  Possibly  Glad- 
stone foresaw  the  tendency  of  the  British  mind.  Possibly  he  already  knew 
better  than  his  colleagues  the  drift  of  opinion  which  must  lead  on  to  a 
larger,  more  just,  and  more  humane  policy  in  the  conduct  of  the  State.  But 
it  cannot  be  doubted  that  he  was  moved  most  of  all  by  the  simple  consider- 
ation of  right  as  he  perceived  it.  The  forces  that  had  bound  his  boyhood 
and  early  public  life  began  to  relax.  He  said  that  he  would  by  no  means 
renounce  the  theories  of  government  in  Church  and  State  which  he  had 
hitherto  defended.  Neither  would  he  allow  that  the  endowments  now  pro- 
posed to  the  Royal  College  of  Maynooth  signified  the  restitution  to  that 
establishment  of  funds  due  on  the  score  of  previous  spoliation  by  the  gov- 
ernment of  Great  Britain.  He  was  not  willing  to  allow  that  a7iy  sum  of 
money  was  d?ie  to  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  in  Ireland.  He  supported 
the  bill  on  other  grounds  exclusively.  The  state  of  Irish  society  suggested 
and  demanded  the  measure  as  one  part  of  a  sound  and  humane  policy. 
The  proposed  endowment  must,  in  the  nature  of  the  case,  exercise  a  strong 
influence  on  the  management  and  sentiments  of  Maynooth,  so  adverse 
hitherto  to  the  Church  of  England  and  to  the  government  by  which  that 
Church  was  authorized  and  supported.  "  There  is  reason,"  said  he,  "  to 
favor  this  bill  on   the  score  of  the    poverty  of  the    Roman  Catholics    in 


140  LIP^E    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

Ireland  and  of  their  great  numbers.  These  people  hnd  great  difficulty  in 
providing  for  themselves  the  necessaries  of  life,  and  still  greater  hardship 
in  supporting  their  own  preachers  and  procuring  education  for  them,"  He 
noted  with  delight  the  enlarged  sentiments  which  he  was  able  to  discover 
in  the  leaders  on  both  sides  of  the  House.  These  sentiments,  expressed  in 
both  words  and  actions,  showed  clearly  the  rising  of  a  humane  opinion,  that 
they  who  pay  the  taxes  of  a  country  have  a  right  to  the  benefit  of  that 
country's  institutions.  As  for  the  theory  that  it  was  the  duty  of  the  British 
government  to  support  exclusively  the  Church  of  England,  that  doctrine  was 
no  longer  wholly  tenable.  It  might  be  true,  as  he  himself  in  an  abstract  argu- 
ment had  urged,  that  the  exclusive  support  of  the  Established  Church  was 
a  function  of  the  State  ;  but  practically  the  doctrine  could  be  no  longer 
applied  to  conditions  present  and  prevalent  in   Great  Britain  and   Ireland. 

The  speaker  went  down  deep  into  the  philosophy  of  the  situation.  He 
ventured  to  refer  to  a  saying  of  Burke's,  that  there  is  on  the  whole  less 
ground  for  supporting  the  somewhat  negative  creed  of  Protestantism  than 
there  is  for  supporting  the  absolutely  positive  creed  of  Catholicism.  The 
attitude  of  Great  Britain  on  this  question  had  become  illogical.  Nearly  all 
the  dissenting  sects  in  England  received  some  kind  of  support,  recognition, 
encouragement  from  the  government.  To  give  such  support  and  recognition 
to  English  Nonconforniists  and  to  refuse  it  to  Irish  Catholics  was  an  incon- 
sistent policy  which  could  not  well  be  defended — indeed,  not  defended  at  all 
in  a  philosophical  manner.  The  endowment  about  to  be  voted  ought  to  be 
voted  in  a  liberal  spirit,  and  he  hoped  that  mutual  confidence  between  the 
two  islands  would  be  promoted  thereby.  Under  such  a  policy  Irish  agita- 
tion ought  to  pass  away.  The  measure  must  really,  he  thought,  be 
accepted,  not  only  as  a  truce  and  an  armistice,  but  as  a  positive  element  of 
peace.  He  begged  to  remind  them  who  were  unreasonably  agitating  the 
question  from  the  Irish  side  that  a  corresponding  agitation  from  the  Church 
establishment  of  England  had  met  the  proposals  of  the  pending  bill,  and 
that  mutual  distrust  and  animosity  were  not  in  the  nature  of  patriotism, 
whether  on  the  one  side  or  the  other.  "  I  trust,"  said  he,  "  that  a  wiser 
spirit  will  preside  over  the  minds  of  both  parties,  and  that  a  conviction  will 
spring  up  in  both  that  this  measure  is  a  surrender  of  rival  claims  for  the 
sake  of  peace.  Believing  the  measure  to  be  conformable  to  justice,  and  not 
finding  any  principle  on  which  to  resist  it,  I  hope  it  will  pass  into  law  and 
receive,  if  not  the  sanction,  at  least  the  acquiescence,  of  the  English  nation." 

It  is  honorable  to  the  parliamentary  history  of  Great  Britain  that  the 
affirmative  vote  on  the  Maynooth  Improvement  Bill  included  the  leading 
men  of  both  parties  in  the  House  of  Commons.  We  should  not  forget  that 
in  all  such  movements  which  history  undertakes  for  the  improvement  of 
mankind  she   avails   herself  of  personal  and  political  interests.     She  uses 


THE    FREE-TRADE    TRANSFORMATION.  I4I 

humanities  and  prejudices  with  equal  faciHty.  The  poHtician,  in  balancing 
up  the  probabilities  favorable  to  himself,  must  make  account  of  how  his 
humane  and  enlightened  measure  will  hereafter  bring  him  votes.  xA.t  this 
calculation  History  smiles,  but  allows  the  human  scheme  to  go  on  without 
interference ;  albeit  in  the  end  her  own  greater  purposes  will  always  be 
reached  and  confirmed. 

Such  measures  as  the  Maynooth  Bill  opened  the  dike  for  the  inletting 
of  many  fructifying  waters.  In  the  case  before  us,  it  was  not  long  until 
another  measure  was  introduced  for  the  general  improvement  of  academical 
education  in  Ireland.  The  bill  in  this  case  was  brought  forward  by  Sir 
James  Graham,  and  was  the  largest  concession  to  Roman  Catholic  interests 
that  had  thus  far  been  seriously  advocated  in  the  House  of  Commons. 
The  Tories  hereupon  took  greater  umbrage  than  ever.  It  is  at  once 
instructive  and  amusing  to  note  the  terror  of  the  past  on  the  appearance 
of  some  beneficent  agitation  in  human  society.  Gladstone  had  now  gone 
so  far  in  religious  liberalism  that  he  supported  Sir  James  Graham''s  bill  ; 
but  the  Conservative  leader,  Sir  R.  H.  Inglis,  flew  to  the  rescue,  and 
denounced  the  measure  as  the  most  oriaantic  scheme  of  godless  education 
ever  propounded  in  any  country. 

A  debate  ensued  between  Sir  Robert  and  Mr.  Gladstone,  in  which  the 
latter  had  the  advantage.  He  admitted,  in  his  usual  cautious  manner,  that 
the  proposed  bill  had  imperfections  which  he  would  gladly  see  removed. 
For  his  own  part,  he  thought  that  the  Catholic  bishops  of  Ireland  ought  to 
have  a  hand  in  the  revision  of  an  educational  measure  which  was  designed 
to  fit  conditions  so  thoroughly  understood  by  them.  He  waived  aside  the 
furious  declamation  of  Sir  Robert  Inglis  about  a  godless  education,  showing 
that  the  bill  itself  contained  a  mild  and  reasonable  provision  for  a  religious 
function  in  the  schools  of  Ireland  ;  namely,  that  in  all  the  schools  a  room 
or  rooms  were  to  be  provided  in  which  theological  lectures  might  be 
delivered  of  a  kind  to  assert  and  even  maintain  the  truth  of  Episcopalianism 
as  the  religion  of  the  State. — This  might  be  regarded  as  equivalent  to  saying 
that  the  antidote  should  be  administered  with  the  bane  ! 

In  the  parliamentary  sessions  of  the  years  1844-46,  certain  questions 
of  vast  importance  to  the  interests  of  Great  Britain  were  brought  for- 
ward as  the  basis  of  legislation.  One  of  these  related  to  the  law  of  partner- 
ship ;  another  to  the  agricultural  condition  of  Great  Britain  ;  a  third  to  the 
sugar  duties,  and  a  fourth  to  the  abolition  of  the  Corn  Laws.  That  relating 
to  the  British  railways  has  already  been  considered.  The  sugar  question 
struck  down  deep  into  the  whole  commercial  system  of  the  realm.  The 
Corn-Law  dispute  also  held  in  it  the  whole  issue  as  between  free  trade  and 
protection,  considered  as  a  policy  of  the  State.  So  important  were  these  ques- 
tions that  Gladstone  at  this  time  considered  them  Z7t  extenso  in  a  political 


142 


LIFE    AND    TIMES    OP^    sVILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 


and  economic  brochure  entitled  Remarks  iipou  Recent  Commercial  Legisla- 
tion. The  work  was  made  up,  in  part,  from  his  own  report  as  President  of 
the  Board  of  Trade,  in  part  from  his  speeches  in  ParHament,  and  in  part 
from  a  general  consideration  of  the  question. 

The  writer  dwelt   in   particular  on   the  tariff  as  affecting-  the  trade  of 
England.     He  attempted,  as  so  many  others  have  done,  to  follow  out  the 


THOMAS    MOORE. 


principle  of  legislative  interference  with  economic  laws  to  the  ultimate  results. 
On  the  whole  his  arguments  tended  to  the  defense  of  free  trade  as  the  true 
policy  of  the  empire.  It  is  evident  from  an  examination  of  his  pamphlet  at 
this  distance,  that  his  opinions  were  rapidly  crystallizing  into  a  conviction 
that  the  best  course  to  follow  in  the  establishment  of  the  supremacy  of 
British  trade  throughout  the  world  was  to  make  that  trade  as  free  as  possi- 
ble— subject  to  as  few  restrictions  in  the  shape  of  customs  duties  as  might 
be  under  existing  conditions. 


THE    FREE-TRADE    TRANSFORMATION.  1 43 

Just  at  this  juncture,  nam.ely,  in  the  year  1845,  ^'''g  of  those  peculiar 
crises  for  which  the  pohtical  history  of  England  is  remarkable  arrived.  It 
became  evident  to  the  Conservative  leaders,  and  to  those  highest  in  authority, 
that  the  time  had  come  when  the  Corn  Laws,  so  long  regarded  as  necessary 
if  not  sacred,  must  be  abolished.  Experience  had  now  written  on  these 
\2L\N%Mene  Tekel,  and  the  Muse  of  Tom  Moore  had  sung  them  into  oblivion. 
It  is  a  peculiarity  of  British  method,  that  unexpectedly  in  high  quarters  there 
comes  a  change  of  front.  One  party,  perhaps  in  power  but  about  to  be 
overwhelmed  by  the  other  party,  suddenly  tacks  and  takes  the  wind  out  of 
the  bellying  sails  of  the  opposition,  and  speeds  away  high-blown  across  the 
ocean  of  Inconsistency  to  the  harbor  of  all  statesmanship — success. 

Just  at  the  close  of  the  year  1845  ^^"'^  London  Times,  without  previous 
hint  or  foreeivine  of  the  thino-  to  be  done,  sent  out  an  editorial  declarintr 
that  Parliament  would  be  convened  by  the  queen's  government  with  the 
beginning  of  the  new  year,  to  consider  the  question  of  abolishing  the  Corn 
Laws  in  toto.  Her  majesty's  address  would  recommend  as  much.  The 
announcement  came  like  a  thunderclap,  unheralded  by  cloud.  The  news 
was  denied  and  denounced  as  false.  The  very  journals  and  public  men  who 
had  lone  labored  to  secure  the  abolition  of  the  Corn  Laws  were  horrified  to 
see  their  prospective  conquest  about  to  be  circumvented  by  a  stroke  of 
policy. 

Sir  Robert  Peel  still  stood  at  the  head  of  the  ministry.  For  a  long 
time  the  leaven  had  been  working  In  his  stubborn  mind,  thoroughly  British, 
tending  ever  more  and  more  to  change  him  from  the  old  restrictive  policy  to 
the  new  methods  and  theory  of  free  trade.  But  another  strongly  British 
complication  arose  with  this  change  in  the  purposes  of  the  premier.  He 
might  change  himself, but  he  could  not  so  easily  transform  his  ministry.  Glad- 
stone, it  will  be  remembered,  had  already  traveled  far  In  the  direction  of 
absolute  freedom  of  commerce  ;  but  some  of  the  other  members  of  the  Peel 
ministry  could  not  be  controlled.  There  was  a  defection  on  the  part  of 
Lord  Stanley,  the  colonial  secretary,  and  of  the  Duke  of  Buccleuch,  both 
cf  whom  declared  that  they  would  not  follow  Sir  Robert  in  his  change  of 
front.  This  so  weakened  the  government  that  Peel  resigned,  and  Lord 
John  Russell  was  summoned  by  her  majesty  to  form  a  new  ministry.  The 
latter  statesman  undertook  to  do  so  ;  but  In  this  he  ran  counter  to  the  rising 
and  determined  sentiment  In  favor  of  abolishing  the  Corn  Laws,  and  was 
oblio^ed  to  give  way,  with  a  request  to  the  queen  to  reappoint  Sir  Robert. 
The  latter  came  back  to  power  ;  Lord  Stanley  disappeared  from  his  post  as 
colonial  secretary,  and  William  E.  Gladstone  was  appointed  to  that  impor- 
tant trust. 

This  movement  led  at  once  to  a  complication  in  the  latter  statesman's 
affairs.     Appointed  to  the  ministry,  he  must  be  reelected  by  his  constituents. 


144  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

Up  to  this  period  he  had  continued  to  represent  the  city  and  borough  of 
Newark.  That  precinct  was  a  sort  of  perquisite  of  his  long-time  friend,  the 
Duke  of  Newcastle.  But  the  duke  was  a  Conservative  of  the  Conserva- 
tives, who  would  not  follow  the  new  policy,  or  even  assent  to  so  radical  a 
measure  as  the  repeal  of  the  Corn  Laws.  The  high  Conservatives  at  this 
epoch  were  protectionists,  pure  and  simple. 

The  American  reader,  however,  must  remember  that  protection,  as 
then  applied  in  Great  Britain,  looked  directly  to  the  primary  productions 
of  the  country,  and  not  at  all  to  the  secondary  industries,  as  in  our  country. 
In  England  it  was  the  manufactures  that  clamored  for  free  trade,  while  the 
agricultural  interest  held  stoutly  to  protection.  The  country  squires  were, 
therefore,  the  high  Tories  of  the  realm,  and  the  Duke  of  Newcastle  followed 
this  banner.  Gladstone,  the  man  of  the  Liverpool  merchants,  followed  it  no 
longer.  It  became  a  political  impropriety  for  him  to  appeal  again  to  the 
electors  of-  Newark,  under  the  patronage  of  the  Duke  of  Newcastle.  He 
must  leave  that  borough  in  order  to  honor  the  opinions  of  his  friend,  and 
to  be  a  consistent  member  of  a  free-trade  ministry. 

The  character  of  Gladstone  in  such  emergencies  always  shone  with  a 
clear  luster.  He  was  an  honorable  man.  Accepting  the  post  of  colonial 
secretary,  he  issued  to  the  voters  of  Newark  an  address  bidding  them  fare- 
well. Under  date  of  the  5th  of  January,  1846,  being  then  in  his  thirty- 
seventh  year,  he  sent  forth  his  communication,  in  which  he  said  : 

"  By  accepting  the  office  of  Secretary  of  State  for  the  Colonies  I  have 
ceased  to  be  your  representative  in  Parliament.  On  several  accounts  I 
should  have  been  peculiarly  desirous,  at  the  present  time,  of  giving  you  an 
opportunity  to  pronounce  your  constitutional  judgment  on  my  public  con- 
duct by  soliciting  at  your  hands  a  renewal  of  the  trust  which  I  have  already 
received  from  you  on  five  successive  occasions,  and  held  during  a  period  of 
thirteen  years.  But  as  I  have  good  reason  to  believe  that  a  candidate 
recommended  to  your  favor  through  local  connections  may  ask  your  suf- 
frages, it  becomes  my  very  painful  duty  to  announce  to  you  on  that  ground 
alone  my  retirement  from  a  position  which  has  afforded  me  so  much  of 
honor  and  of  satisfaction." 

In  the  course  of  his  address  Mr.  Gladstone  explained  his  motives  in 
accepting  office  in  a  government  avowedly  in  favor  of  removing  the  legisla- 
tion which  was  supposed  to  uphold  the  agricultural  interest  of  England. 
He  avowed  his  belief  that  the  new  policy  would  prove  a  beneficial  one  to 
all  classes  of  British  subjects.  He  further  declared  that  he  had  followed  in 
this  instance  not  only  his  own  conscience,  but  the  public  call,  which  none 
might  patriotically  disregard. 

However  reasonable  all  this  was,  the  change  involved  a  temporary  loss 
to  Gladstone.     No  other  constituency  could  be  immediately  found  to  return 


THE    FREE-TRADE    TRANSFORMATION. 


H5 


ELECTION   MEETING   IN   IRELAND. 


146  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

him  to  the  House,  and  for  the  nonce  he  might  be  regarded  as  a  statesman 
without  a  vocation.  He  had  now  become,  however,  so  pronounced  in  his 
advocacy  of  free  trade,  and  his  abiHty  and  honesty  were  so  much  in  evidence, 
that  his  influence  was  almost  as  great  as  ever  in  the  brief  interval  between 
the  sessions  of  1846  and  1847. 

In  the  meantime  a  natural  disaster  came  on  to  influence  most  strongly 
the  affairs  of  men.  The  potato  rot  appeared  in  Ireland.  The  people  were 
about  to  famish.  As  the  law  then  stood  the  cereals  so  necessary  for  life 
might  not  be  imported  without  paying  such  duties  as  greatly  to  aggravate 
the  price.  England  w^as  in  the  attitude  of  starving  Ireland  by  means  of 
her  tariff !  The  argument  w^as  stronger  than  the  combined  energies  of 
Aristotle  and  Adam  Smith.  The  only  question  was  whether  Sir  Robert 
Peel,  remaining  over,  so  to  speak,  from  the  old  order,  should  take  away  from 
the  Liberals  the  fruits  of  their  victory,  or  whether  he  should  give  way  to 
them,  letting  them  work  their  will. 

Sir  Robert  was  not  the  man  to  surrender  his  advantage,  and  his  colo- 
nial secretary  was  as  little  as  he  disposed  to  leave  the  execution  of  the 
reform  that  was  now  inevitable  to  the  hands  of  the  opposition.  The 
premier,  at  the  opening  of  Parliament  in  1847,  declared  his  purpose  to 
press  forward  at  once  to  the  abrogation  of  the  Corn  Laws.  His  speech  on 
the  occasion  was  marked  with  as  much  energy  as  he  ever  displayed.  He 
acknowledged  the  change  in  his  own  opinions.  He  had  yielded,  he  said, 
to  the  logic  of  events.  A  potato  famine  was  at  the  door.  Consistency 
must  give  way  before  hunger,  and  mere  logic  must  yield  to  that  necessity 
which  is  hieher  even  than  States.  An  investigation  into  the  affairs  of 
Ireland  had  brought  him  to  understand  his  duty,  and  he  would  not  quail 
before  it. 

It  is  a  notable  circumstance  of  the  crisis  which  w^as  now  on  that  Ben- 
jamin Disraeli,  rising  in  an  eccentric  manner  above  the  horizon,  appeared 
as  the  mouthpiece  of  the  agricultural  aristocracy  of  England,  entered  the 
arena  against  the  proposed  repeal,  and  twitted  the  colonial  secretary,  with 
whom  he  w^as  destined  to  contend  for  the  mastery  for  so  many  years,  with 
his  alleged  inconsistency.  His  remarks  on  the  occasion  were  directed  in 
part  to  Sir  Robert  Peel,  and  in  part  to  Mr.  Gladstone.  Disraeli  declared 
that,  as  for  him,  he  adhered  without  wavering  to  the  opinions  which  he  had 
hitherto  declared  in  favor  of  the  time-honored  policy  of  agricultural  protec- 
tion. He  referred  to  the  fact  that  the  representatives  of  this  view  of 
national  economy  had  sent  him  to  speak  for  them  in  Parliament,  and  that 
he  could  not,  either  from  his  own  convictions  or  from  fidelity  to  those 
whom  he  represented,  abandon  his  well-known  views.  He  would  sooner 
resign  his  seat  In  the  House. 

These  remarks  were  not  without  pungency.     While  they  were  logically 


THE    FREE-TRADE    TRANSFORiMATION. 


147 


SCENE   DURING   THE   POTATO    FAMINE. 


keen  they  could  hardly  be  said  to  have  reached  their  mark,  for  the  bosses 
of  progress  were  held  between  the  speaker's  javelin  and  the  targets  at 
which  they  were  aimed,  and  the  hollow-eyed  specter  of  the  potato  famine 
looked  sardonically  into  the  face  of  the  archer.  The  measure  went  steadily 
on  until  it  accorfiplished  itself,  and  the  Corn  Laws  were  no  more.  The  act 
had  a  specific  and  a  general  significance.  Specifically  it  signified  that  the 
particular  industry  of  producing  the  cereals  in  England  should  not  be 
further  favored  at  the  expense  of  the  manufacturing  and  commercial  inter- 
est. Generally  it  signified  that  Great  Britain  was  now  on  the  high  road  to 
the  adoption  of  the  permanent  policy  of  free  trade  as  against  the  whole 
protective  theory  and  practice. 

Thus,  by  the  famous  Act  9  and  10  Vict.  c.  22,  the  long-standing  Corn 
Laws  of  Great  Britain  were  abolished.  The  policy  of  raising  and  maintain- 
ing at  a  higher  than  natural  figure  the  price  of  grain  went  down  before  the 
arguments  of  Richard  Cobden  and  the  persistent  pressure  of  the  Anti-Corn 
Law  Leaeue.  The  reason  of  man  and  the  interest  of  a  class,  enero^ized  bv 
the  potato  rot  in  Ireland,  prevailed  to  put  an  end  to  the  tax  so  long  imposed 
on  manufacturers  and  consumers  in  the  interest  of  grain  raisers.    The  repeal 


148 


LIFE    AND    TI.MES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 


bill  provided  for  an  iininediate  reduction  of  the  duty  on  foreign  wheat  to  a 
maximum  of  ten  shillings  the  quarter  when  the  price  should  be  under  forty- 
eight  shillings  the  quarter  ;  to  five  shillings  the  quarter  on  barley,  when  the 
price  should  be  under  twenty-six  shillings  the  quarter  ;  and  to  four  shillings 
the  quarter  on  oats  when  the  price  should  be  under  eighteen  shillings  the 
quarter.  When  the  price  should  rise  above  these  figures  then  the  duties 
should  be  lower,  and  finally,  on  the  ist  of  February,  1849,  ^^e  old  system 
of  duties  was  to  cease  in  toto.  Thereafter  all  foreio-n  cereals  were  to  be 
admitted  at  the  nominal  rate  of  one  shilling  the  quarter,  and  all  foreign 
meal  and  fiour  at  the  rate  of  four  and  a  half  pence  the  hundredweight. 
And  we  may  here  anticipate  by  referring  to  the  act  of  i860,  by  which  even 
the  nominal  duties  remaining  under  the  act  of  repeal  were  abolished — since 
which  time  wheat,  barley,  oats,  etc.,  and  their  immediate  products  have  been 
admitted  into  the  United  Kingdom  free  from  duties. 


REPRESENTATIVK    OF    OXFORD    UNIVERSITY.  I49 


CHAPTER  IX. 

Representative  of  Oxford  University. 

ILLIAM  E.  GLADSTONE  supported  with  animation  and  per- 
sistency the  administration  of  Sir  Robert  Peel.  Strangely 
enough,  on  the  very  day  on  which  the  Corn  Laws  were  finally 
abolished  by  the  stratagem  of  the  Conservatives,  the  ministry 
of  Sir  Robert  was  overthrown  by  an  adverse  vote  in  the  House 
of  Commons.  While  the  debates  were  in  progress  relative  to  the  repeal,  an 
important  incidental  measure  had  been  brought  into  the  Commons  by  the 
ministry,  to  suppress  certain  outrages  in  Ireland.  The  starving  people  of 
that  island  were  not  sufficiently  tame.  Lawlessness,  inspired  of  hunger, 
prevailed  in  many  parts,  and  government  conceived  the  project  of  suppress- 
ing it  by  force.  The  measure  came  to  a  vote  in  the  House  coincidently 
with  the  passage  of  the  repeal  bill  by  the  Lords,  and  to  the  surprise  of  Sir 
Robert  Peel  was  voted  down  by  a  large  majority.  The  blow  was  so  direct 
and  significant  that  the  premier  at  once  placed  his  resignation  in  the  hands 
of  her  majesty,  who  called  Lord  John  Russell,  leader  of  the  Whig  opposi- 
tion, to  construct  a  new  ministry. 

Peel  and  the  Conservatives  went  out  of  office,  and  Gladstone  with 
them.  For  a  brief  interval  he  absented  himself  from  the  Commons,  and 
when  the  new  election  came  around,  the  question  then  being  approval  or  dis- 
approval of  the  late  legislation  on  the  educational  affairs  of  Ireland,  he  pre- 
sented himself  to  the  electors  of  Oxford  University.  That  institution  was  at 
the  time  represented  in  one  of  its  memberships  by  Sir  Robert  H.  Inglis.  The 
other  seat  might  be  contested.  For  this  second  seat,  Gladstone  appeared 
in  a  very  spirited  contest  with  the  opposing  contestant,  Mr.  Round.  The 
latter  had  the  advantage  of  being  a  thoroughly  orthodox  Tory.  Mr.  Glad- 
stone was  sufficiently  orthodox,  but  his  conservatism  had  become  somewhat 
doubtful — as  evinced  of  late  by  his  speeches  and  votes  on  the  Maynooth 
College  Bill  and  on  the  repeal  of  the  Corn  Laws.  Both  the  candidates 
were  men  of  ability,  Gladstone  being  the  superior.  But  he  was  handicapped 
with  a  certain  distrust  that  he  was  no  longer  sound  on  some  of  the  questions 
concerning  which  Oxford  University  was  known  to  be  grounded  in  stead- 
fastness and  immutability. 

In  entering  the  contest  for  the  right  to  represent  the  oldest  and  most 
scholarly  university  of  Great  Britain,  Mr.  Gladstone  sent  to  the  Oxford 
electors  the  usual  address  of  announcement.  In  this  he  must  needs  appear 
as  an  apologist  for  his  recent  political  acts  and  tendencies.  He  frankly 
acknowledged  that  the  incoming  of  new  conditions  in  Great  Britain  had 
changed  his  views  since  he  had  written  and  published  The  State  in  its  Rela- 


150  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

tioiis  with  the  Church.  That  event  was  now  nearly  ten  years  agone.  The 
point  at  which  he  had  veered  from  his  former  stand  was  as  to  the  exclusive 
support  of  the  State  rehgion  as  a  function  of  the  government.  He  declared 
that  the  fight  which  he  had  made  for  this  principle  had  proved  abortive.  In 
Great  Britain  there  were  many  forms  of  religious  faith.  The  condition  had 
become  so  complicated  that  to  single  out  even  the  national  religion,  which 
was  indeed  the  true  religion  of  England,  and  to  make  the  support  of  that 
exclusive  of  all  others  was  a  policy  no  longer  warranted  in  practice. 

Referring  to  past  conditions,  and  to  the  necessity  that  he  had  been 
under  to  make  a  choice,  the  speaker  said  :  "  The  question  remaining  for  me 
was,  whether,  aware  of  the  opposition  of  the  English  people,  I  should  set 
down  as  equal  to  nothing,  in  a  matter  primarily  connected  not  with  our  own, 
but  with  their  priesthood,  the  wishes  of  the  people  of  Ireland  ;  and  whether 
I  should  avail  myself  of  the  popular  feeling  in  regard  to  Roman  Catholics 
for  the  purpose  of  enforcing  against  them  a  system  which  we  had  ceased  b\- 
common  consent  to  enforce  against  Arians — a  system  above  all  of  which  I 
must  say  that  it  never  can  be  conformable  to  policy,  to  justice,  or  even 
to  decency,  when  it  has  become  avowedly  partial  and  one-sided  in  its 
application." 

Perhaps  this  presentation  of  his  cause  was  as  strong  as  Mr.  Gladstone  was 
able  to  make  it ;  but  it  was  by  no  means  satisfactory  to  the  Oxford  extremists. 
That  constituency  already  had  one  of  their  own  kind  in  the  person  of  Sir 
Robert  H.  Inglis.  To  him  Mr.  Round,  the  third  candidate,  was  hardly  second 
in  his  allegiance  to  the  old,  and  opposition  to  the  new  order  in  England.  It  was 
noted  at  the  time  that,  while  the  opposition  to  Gladstone  among  the  electors 
was  loud  and  rather  angry,  the  secular  voice  about  the  university  and  far 
beyond  the  time-honored  precincts,  finding  utterance  in  the  newspapers  of 
the  day,  generally  cried  for  Gladstone.  The  position  taken  by  his  advocates 
was  that  his  allegiance  to  the  Church  of  Encrland  was  unshaken,  that  his 
fidelity  at  bottom  to  the  Establishment  could  not  be  questioned  ;  but  that  a 
statesman  must  before  all  things  be  practical.  It  was  no  longer  practical  to 
go  to  the  extreme  which  had — as  all  confessed  and  knew — been  so  strongly 
supported  by  the  candidate  in  his  work  on  the  Church  and  the  State.  That 
candidate  at  anv  rate  was  able  and  distinoruished.  He  was  one  of  the 
hardest-working  parliamentarians  of  the  epoch.  He  was  honest,  else  he 
would  not  have  taken  his  present  position,  to  his  so  great  hurt.  It  was  no 
longer  needed — so  continued  the  apologists — that  a  statesman  following 
abstract  views  should  make  himself  and  his  cause  impossible.  A  man 
could  not  always  promote  in  practice  his  own  philosophical  opinions. 

These  views  found  echo  far  and  wide,  and  as  the  canvass  proceeded 
Gladstone  gained  on  his  competitor.  It  was  noted  that  those  high  in 
authority  and  close  to  the  government  uttered  good  words  for  the  coming  man. 


REPRESENTATIVE    OF    OXFORD    UNIVERSITY.  15I 

The  London  Times  declared  that  Mr.  Gladstone's  election,  while,  unlike  that 
of  Mr.  Round,  it  would  send  an  important  member  to  the  House  of  Commons, 
would  be  alike  honorable  and  valuable  to  Oxford  University.  The  hope 
was  added  that  no  hesitancy  or  apathy  among-  the  electors  might  prevent 
so  fortunate  a  result.     The  interest  widened  and  became  almost  national. 

Meanwhile,  on  the  23d  of  July,  the  queen  dissolved  Parliament.  Six 
days  afterward,  the  nomination  of  representatives  for  Oxford  took  place. 
The  election  was  held  in  the  Hall  of  Convocation  at  the  university.  More 
than  thirty-eight  hundred  votes  were  presented  at  the  polls.  The  excite- 
ment was  intense,  and  the  contest  close  as  between  Gladstone  and  Round. 
The  election  of  Sir  R.  H.  Inglis  had  been  conceded,  and  that  gentleman 
received  almost  as  many  ballots  as  both  the  others.  Gladstone  led  his 
opponent  by  one  hundred  and  seventy-three  votes,  and  thus  became  the 
junior  representative  of  his  alma  mater  in  the  Parliament  of  1847. 

The  American  reader  at  the  close  of  the  century  must  review  with 
interest  the  liberalizingf  tendencies  that  were  workinor  in  Great  Britain  in 
the  fourth  and  fifth  decades.  Such  liberalism  as  then  began  to  prevail, 
however,  must  needs  strike  strangely  on  the  American  sense.  How,  for 
example,  could  that  be  called  liberal  which  merely  acknowledged  that  a 
citizen  Jew  in  London  was  even  as  other  men  .? 

And  wliat's  his  reason.?  I  am  a  Jew.  Hath  not  a  Jew  eyes.''  hath  not  a  Jew  hands, 
organs,  dimensions,  senses,  affections,  passions  .''  fed  with  the  same  food,  hurt  with  the  same 
weapons,  subject  to  the  same  diseases,  healed  by  the  same  means,  warmed  and  cooled  by 
the  same  winter  and  summer,  as  a  Christian  is  ?  If  you  prick  us,  do  we  not  bleed  ?  if  you  tickle 
us,  do  we  not  laugh  }  aye,  if  you  poison  us,  do  we  not  die  ? 

This  argument  of  Shylock's,  though  put  in  the  interrogative  form, 
would  seem  to  be  unanswerable  in  all  time  and  among  all  nations.  But 
the  Englishman  of  the  first  quarter  of  the  nineteenth  century  did  not 
assent  to  the  humane  theory  of  his  greatest  bard.  The  Jews  were  dis- 
paraged out  of  citizenship  and  almost  out  of  property  and  life.  .  Coin- 
cidently  with  the  passage  of  the  Reform  Bill  and  with  the  introduction 
of  a  better  policy  toward  Dissenters  and  Catholics  it  began  to  be  acknowl- 
edged that  even  an  Israelite  is  human.  The  restrictions  against  the 
race  of  Jacob  began  to  relax,  and  in  the  election  of  1847,  what  should 
happen  in  the  heart  of  London  town  but  the  election  of  the  Baron  Mayer 
Anselm  Rothschild  to  the  House  of  Commons!  Certainly  it  was  a 
marvelous  thing  that  one  of  that  race  should  be  thought  fit  to  represent  a 
London  constituency  holding  the  principle  that  religion  is  a  function  of  the 
State,  and  that  no  religion  is  authentic  other  than  that  incorporated  in  the 
Church  founded  and  enforced  by  Henry  VHI  ! 

The  Baron  Mayer  Anselm  of  the  Red  Shield  was  elected.  But  how 
could  he  serve  }    There  was  a  statute  demandine  of  him  before  his  entrance 


152 


hlFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 


into  the  House  that  he  take  an  oath  of  fidehty  to  the  Church  of  England, 
renouncing  all  others!  He  must  swear  "on  the  faith  of  a  true  Christian." 
Of  course  a  man  of  pliant  conscience  might  readily  do  a  thing  of  this  kind, 
covering  it  up  with  the  usual  casuistry  that  it  was  vcv^x^y  pj^o  forma  ;  but  not 
so  the  baron.     He  was  so  dishonorable  as  to  refuse  to  swear  a  lie,  even  for 


THE   PRESENT    BARON    ROTHSCHILD. 


admission  to  the  British  Parliament!  Such  stubbornness,  though  it  might 
commend  him  to  a  heathen,  must  needs  provoke  the  good.  Lord  John 
Russell,  now  at  the  head  of  the  ministry,  with  that  adroitness  for  which  he 
was  one  of  the  most  remarkable  of  men,  sought  to  make  a  way  with  a  reso- 
lution to  the  effect  that  Jews  should  be,  and  were,  eligible  to  all  offices  and 
rights  "  to  which  Roman  Catholics  might  attain."  Already  the  way  had 
been  crookedly  opened  for   Catholics  to  enter  Parliament  and  to  exercise 


REPRESENTATIVE    OF    OXFORD    UNlVERSrrV.  1 53 

Other  public  functions.  Why  should  not  the  Jews  go  up  by  the  same  tor- 
tuous course  ? 

Though  this  proposition  of  the  premier  was  a  casuistical  contrivance 
rather  than  an  open  avowal,  it  was  even  in  that  form  antagonized  by  the  Con- 
servative opposition.  Sir  R.  H.  Inglis,  senior  representative  from  Oxford, 
strongly  opposed  the  resolution  ;  but  his  colleague,  \V.  E.  Gladstone,  had 
now  gone  so  far  as  to  support  it.  He  addressed  the  House  with  what  was 
really  an  unanswerable  argument.  He  began  with  the  question  as  to  what 
ground  existed  for  the  exclusion  of  a  Jew  more  than  for  the  exclusion  of  a 
citizen  of  any  other  class  sharing  in  the  deliberations  of  Parliament.  He 
refuted  the  arguineniitui  ad prejiLciiciam  to  the  effect  that  the  British  House 
of  Commons  was  a  Christian  Parliament.  Certainly  it  was  a  Christian  Par- 
liament, and  would  always  remain  such.  It  could  not  be  unchristianized  by 
the  addition  of  a  Jew  or  Christianized  by  his  exclusion.  It  was  not  to  be 
expected  that  the  time  would  ever  arrive  when  a  majority,  or  even  a 
threatening  minority,  of  the  House  would  be  or  could  be  of  non-Christian  or 
unchristian  character.  The  apprehension  that  the  admission  of  a  Jew  to 
Parliament  would  draw  down  the  wrath  of  heaven  was  merely  an  utterance 
in  tei'rorem  delivered  to  the  simple. 

The  speaker  went  on  to  show  that  the  admission  of  Jews  to  citizenship 
involved  the  right  of  the  prejudiced  race  to  aspire  to  the  representative 
honor  and  prerogative.  A  member  of  the  House  must  needs  be  a  law- 
maker; but  in  that  capacity  he  was  the  organ  of  a  constituency.  There 
was  no  reason. why  any  member  of  a  constituency  should  be  excluded.  As 
long  as  the  constituencies  continued  to  be  Christian,  so  long  must  the 
British  Parliament  remain  for  all  practical  purposes  as  Christian  as  before. 
Moreover,  the  admission  of  Jews  once  granted,  the  irrational  opposition  to 
the  measure  must  soon  pass  away.  Such  a  prejudice  could  not  be  long 
supported.  The  motion  of  Lord  John  Russell  was  an  expression  of  the 
common  sense  and  good^faith  of  the  English  people.  It  was  the  voice  of 
justice — a  voice  not  in  opposition  to  the  Church  of  England  and  much  less 
in  opposition  to  Christianity  as  a  system  of  faith  and  practice,  but  rather  a 
measure  in  opposition  to  the  continuance  of  prejudices  on  the  score  of  race 
and  religion.  Certainly  if  the  resolution  should  be  adopted  the  Established 
Church  should  be  on  the  alert  to  extend  and  confirm  her  influence  in  the 
State,  to  the  end  that  the  time-honored  relations  between  the  two  might 
not  be  disturbed  or  broken.  As  for  himself,  he  had  foreseen  that  the  former 
statute  removing  the  disabilities  of  the  Jews  would  lead  logically  to  their 
admission  to  office  in  the  State. 

All  this  may  in  the  retrospect  seem  reasonable  enough.  The  American 
reader  can  hardly  conceive  of  any  answer  to  an  argument  so  strongly 
buttressed  with  truth  and  humanitv.     We  note  with  astonishment,  however, 


154 


LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 


MUSTER   OF   THE    IRISH    AT    MULLINAHONE   UNDER   SMITH    O'BKIEN,    1 848. 


REPRESENTATIVE    OF    OXFORD    UNIVERSITY.  1 55 

that  in  the  course  of  the  debate  Mr.  Gladstone  was  twitted  with  the  asser- 
tion that  if  he  had  made  his  speech  before  the  late  election  he  would  never 
have  represented  the  University  of  Oxford  in  the  House  of  Commons. 
And  that  was  probably  true!  In  the  conclusion  ot  the  discussion  the  reso- 
lution of  Lord  John  Russell  was  carried;  but  the  Baron  Rothschild, 
refusing  to  avail  himself  of  the  tortuous  method  of  gettino;  into  Parliament, 
would  not  take  his  seat.  He  would  not  accept  an  oath  which  was  hateful 
alike  to  his  faith  and  his  honor.  Nor  did  he  finally  enter  the  Commons  until 
more  than  ten  years  afterward,  when  the  oath,  first  falling  into  desuetude 
and  then  into  contempt,  was  finally  abrogated  as  to  Jewish  members. 

While  the  life  of  Gladstone  was  thus  winding  on  through  the  parlia- 
mentary history  of  the  decade  the  Chartist  agitation  in  England  rose  higher 
and  higher.  The  British  Chartists,  carrying  banners  with  the  Lovctt 
charter  on  them,  went  up  and  down  the  realm.  The  demand  for  the  enlarge- 
ment and  confirmation  of  English  liberties  was  loudly  echoed  in  many  parts. 
The  reader  should  remember  that  this  agitation  was  a  part  of  the  conti- 
nental movement  which  resulted  in  the  Revolution  of  1848.  Almost  every 
nation  in  Europe  was  shaken  to  its  center.  England,  as  usual  in  such  times 
of  upheaval,  was  less  disturbed  than  the  rest ;  but  the  excitement  was  suffi- 
cient to  alarm  the  existing  order  not  a  little. 

In  some  parts  of  the  country  there  were  serious  outbreaks.  Mass 
meetings,  bonfires,  processions,  and  declamations  were  the  order  of  the  day. 
At  one  time  the  people  rushed  by  thousands  into  Trafalgar  Square.  Glas- 
gow was  the  scene  of  a  riot,  which  was  put  down  under  fire  by  the  military. 
In  Edinburgh  and  Manchester  there  were  similar  scenes  ;  but  in  these  cities, 
as  in  most  other  places,  there  was  little  bloodshed.  On  the  loth  of  April, 
1848,  a  great  throng,  numbering  more  than  twenty  thousand,  gathered  on 
Kennington  Common.  The  defense,  however,  had  been  intrusted  to  the 
Duke  of  Wellinofton,  under  whom  two  hundred  thousand  militiamen  were 
enrolled.  It  was  apprehended  that  the  insurrection  of  the  people  might 
proceed  as  far  as  violent  revolt.  Those  who  claimed  to  be  the  champions 
of  law  and  order  easily  held  the  ascendant.  The  municipal  combined  with 
the  military  arm  to  overawe  the  Chartists,  and  the  latter  were  effectually 
cowed.  They  had  prepared  the  largest  petition  which  had  thus  far  been 
known  in  the  annals  of  mankind,  and  this  petition  they  would  bear  with 
the  pomp  of  thousands  to  the  doors  of  Parliament.  The  existing  order 
sought  to  make  the  enormous  business  ridiculous,  and,  having  the  organs 
of  public  opinion,  well-nigh  succeeded  in  doing  so.  Nor  may  we  well  pass 
from  this  episode  Avithout  noting  the  fact  that  in  the  enrollment  of  special 
constables  to  act  in  the  preservation  of  the  peace  at  London,  among 
hundreds  of  other  conspicuous  names  appear  those  of  Louis  Napoleon  Bona- 
parte, destined  in  less  than  a  quadrennium  to  make  himself  emperor  of  the 


156  LIKE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

French,  and  William  Ewart  Gladstone,  in  like  manner  appointed  to  a  con- 
spicuous place  in  the  history  of  the  succeeding  quarter  of  a  century. 

However  successful  the  ministry  of  Lord  John  Russell  may  have  been 
in  confronting  the  dangers  of  this  troublous  period  it  soon  fell  into  extreme 
perils.  The  worst  evil  that  came  at  this  juncture  was  a  deficit  of  more  than 
two  millions  of  pounds  in  the  treasury.  We  may  here  observe,  in  a  philo- 
sophical way,  and  without  much  reference  to  current  conditions  in  our  own 
country,  that  the  immediate  effects  of  free  trade  and  protection  on  the 
introduction  of  the  one  or  the  other  as  a  State  policy  are  sufficiently 
remarkable.  That  State  which  turns  from  free  trade  to  protection  enters 
at  once  upon  a  period  of  ostensible  prosperity  as  it  respects  national  finances. 
The  State  that  turns  from  protection  toward  free  trade  gets  itself,  for  a  time, 
into  a  strait  place  for  the  means  w^ith  which  to  uphold  what  is  called  the 
national  credit  and  to  maintain  a  respectable  balance  in  the  treasury.  We 
do  not  here  enter  into  the  remote  or  ultimate  results  of  the  two  systems,  but 
speak  only  of  the  temporary  stimulus  afforded  by  the  one  and  the  depres- 
sion likely  to  follow  the  adoption  of  the  other. 

In  1848  England  may  be  regarded  as  having  established  herself  on  the 
basis  of  free  trade.  For  the  time  being  she  suffered  hardship  on  account 
of  it.  The  deficit  was  alarming.  The  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer  recom- 
mended an  increase  of  taxation.  He  would  have  the  income  tax,  to  which 
Sir  Robert  Peel  had  resorted,  not  only  continued  for  five  years,  but 
increased  from  seven  pence  to  a  shilling  the  pound.  The  measure  proposed 
reached  only  the  incomes  of  Great  Britain.  As  to  Ireland,  that  country 
had  none — at  least  so  few  that  it  was  deemed  expedient  not  to  carry  the 
tax  across  the  Channel. 

Such  a  proposition  must  needs  excite  furious  debate.  No  other  thing, 
not  even  life,  will  defend  itself  like  property.  The  moneyed  interests 
sprang  up  full  armed.  The  representatives  of  the  landed  aristocracy  cried 
out  against  ofovernment,  declarinor  that  the  deficit  and  the  w^oeful  condition 
of  the  whole  financial  system  w^ere  the  necessary  and  inevitable  results  of 
that  heretical  free  trade  which  had  been  adopted  along  with  the  overthrow 
of  the  time-honored  system  of  Great  Britain.  The  peculiar  character  of 
these  reflections  obliged  Sir  Robert  Peel,  leader  of  the  opposition,  to  go 
over  to  the  support  of  the  ministry,  for  it  had  been  the  work  of  his  ministry 
to  abolish  the  Corn  Laws.  It  was  as  though  Senator  Sherman  should  have 
supported  the  financial  policy  of  the  second  administration  of  Cleveland — 
as  he  must  needs  do  in  self-defense.  The  debate  w^as  hot.  The  eccentric 
and  brilliant  L^israeli  threw^  himself  into  the  arena  to  answer  Sir  Robert  Peel. 
His  sarcasm  flew  like  venom.  He  declared  that,  as  to  himself,  he  might  be 
regarded  as  a  free  trader,  but  that  there  was  a  difference  between  a  free 
trader  and  -d.  freebooter  !     The  latter  was  the  proper  office  and  designation 


REPRESENTATIVE    OF    OXFORD    UNIVERSITY.  15^ 

of  the  Manchester  school  of  economists.  He  held  up  a  copy  of  the  Blue 
Book  containing  the  ministerial  statistics  prepared  by  the  Committee  on 
Imports,  declaring  that  that  book  he  considered  the  greatest  work  of 
imagination  produced  in  the  nineteenth  century  !  The  effect  of  these  sallies 
was  immense.  The  delioht  of  the  Conservatives  was  unbounded  on  behold- 
ing  Sir  Robert  Peel  thus  impaled.  Some  one  must  of  necessity  come  to  the 
rescue,  and  that  some  one  was  .Gladstone. 

He  had  every  motive  for  replying.  In  the  first  place  his  friend  and 
leader,  Sir  Robert  Peel,  had  been  assailed.  In  the  next  place  the  policy  of 
freeing  the  manufacturing  interests  and  commerce  from  the  burden  imposed 
by  the  Corn  Laws  was  challenged,  as  if  that  policy  should  be  undone. 
Thirdly,  a  leader  admired  by  the  landed  aristocracy  and  wholly  acceptable 
thereto — brilliant,  courageous,  and  vindictive — had  appeared,  as  if  to  deny 
the  right  of  any  but  himself  to  be  first  in  the  Parliament  of  Great  Britain. 
Gladstone  knew  on  entering  the  debate,  and  acknowledged  in  his  intro- 
ductory paragraphs,  that  he  could  not  meet  his  sarcastic  and  wary  antagonist 
on  his  chosen  plane  of  bitter  wit  and  stinging  repartee  ;  but  he  was  willing 
to  argue  the  question  and  to  defend  the  policy  of  the  Peel  administration. 

That  administration  he  proceeded  to  consider  in  the  light  of  the  facts. 
His  appeal  was  to  statistics.  He  adduced  figures  in  abundance  to  show 
that,  on  the  whole.  Great  Britain  was  prosperous,  or  at  least  was  beginning 
to  prosper,  from  the  abrogation  of  the  old  and  the  substitution  of  a  new 
code  of  economics.  He  pointed  out  that  the  reversal  of  this  policy,  or  the 
attempted  reversal  of  it,  by  a  vote  of  a  majority  of  the  House  against  the 
Income  Tax  Bill- could  but  prove  disastrous.  Such  a  course  would  imply 
vacillation,  uncertainty.  It  would  imply  ignorance  of  the  facts.  It  would 
tend  to  show  that  the  continental  disturbances  of  the  year,  so  terrible  in 
Belgium  and  France  and  Germany,  were  working  also  their  pernicious  influ- 
ence in  Great  Britain — a  thing  to  be  deprecated  by  all  patriots.  As  for 
himself,  he  did  not  doubt  that  the  British  Parliament  would  show  itself 
worthy  of  its  predecessors.  He  did  not  doubt  that  the  general  will  of  the 
nation  would  be  sustained.  He  did  not  doubt  that  while  European  society 
was  shaken  and  in  some  parts  reduced  to  chaos  England  would  remain  as 
firm  as  ever.  Social  order  should  be  upheld.  Trade  should  be  protected 
and  confirmed.  Public  employments  should  be  made  pure.  Conscience, 
more  than  party,  should  be  followed  in  such  an  era  of  disturbance  and 
danger.  Parliament,  acting  with  moderation  and  prudence,  should  show  its 
devotion  to  English  institutions.  Those  institutions  would  still  survive  to 
bless  the  coming  times.  Great  Britain  should  not  yield  to  the  European 
turmoil. — On  the  whole  the  effect  of  these  pacific  and  conservative  utter- 
ances was  hardly  less  marked  than  had  been  the  epigrams  of  Disraeli. 
The  measure  of  the  income  tax  for  three  years  was  carried  through  Parlia- 


1=^8 


LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 


ment  by  a  substantial   majority,  and  the  policy  of  free  trade  emphatically 
confirmed. 

We  have  just  remarked  the  distracted  condition  prevailing  in  Europe 
in  the  year  1848.  Nothing  like  it  had  been  witnessed  since  the  era  of  the 
French  Revolution.  The  Citizen  King  of  the  French  was  readily  dismissed 
from  further  service.     The  revolution  spread    into   Belgium  and  Spain  and 


WILLIAM    SMITH    O'bRIEN. 


Italy  and  far  beyond  the  Rhine.  Chartism  in  England  was  the  correlated 
circumstance.  The  orovernment  of  Great  Britain  must  needs  be  antirevo- 
lutionary.  Victoria  and  the  late  King  of  the  French  had  been  atone.  The 
Chartist  leaders  found  that  the  overturning  of  political  abuses  was  a  much 
more  difficult  task  than  it  had  been  with  the  revolutionists  on  the  Conti- 
nent. The  insurrections  in  Paris,  Berlin,  and  Brussels  had  easily  succeeded  ; 
but  that  in  London  could  not  succeed — except  by  the  tedious  processes  of 


REPRESENTATIVE    OF    OXFORD    UNIVERSITY. 


159 


history.  It  is  not  in  the  nature  of  England  to  yield  of  a  sudden  to  any- 
thing. Her  structure  will  not  permit  it.  That  structure  has  been  wrought 
by  centuries  of  evolution  and  increase.  On  it  the  Conqueror  used  his 
battle-ax  more  than  eight  centuries  ago.  On  it  rang  the  swords  of  the 
Plantagenets.  The  war  hammers  of  York  and  Lancaster  resounded  on 
bulwark  and  buttress.  Victoria  had  now  added  grace  and  womanhood  ; 
the  coping  stones  were  not  without  glory.  At  the  middle  of  our  century 
English  liberty  was  still  a  crude  thing,  and  in  many  respects  a  misnomer  ; 
but  it  was  worth  havinor. 

So  England  would  not  revolutionize  under  the  clamor  of  Chartism. 
Parliament  became  reformatory  by  littles.  There  was  some  reform  and 
some  adjustment,  after  the  British  manner.  The  Irish  agitators — O'Con- 
nell,  O'Brien,  Meagher,  Duffy,  and  Mitchel — shot  into  the  sky  of  agitation, 
but  went  away  like  meteors.  There  was  persecution,  false  trials,  false 
convictions,  and  some  hanging,  which  would  have  been  beheading  and 
quartering  if  the  sentences  of  the  courts  could  have  been  carried  out. 

In  the  midst  of  all  this  two  characters  emerged,  one  of  which  it  is  the 
business  of  this  narrative  to  follow  to  the  end.  The  other  was  that  fantas- 
tic Hebrew,  Benjamin  Disraeli,  who,  from  beginning  as  the  butt  of  the 
House  of  Commons,  rose  more  and  more  to  the  rank  of  leadership.  This 
remarkable  personage  had  entered  Parliament  as  a  Radical.  On  account  of 
his  quaint  apparel,  loud  ways,  and  his  mixation  of  peacock  and  jackdaw  he 
had  been  hooted  down  on  the  occasion  of  his  maiden  speech.  He  had 
persevered,  however,  against  all  kinds  of  prejudice,  from  the  age-long 
prejudice  of  race  to  the  gadfly  prejudice  of  mere  personalities.  More  and 
more  he  gained  on  the  contempt  with  which  he  was  first  assailed.  He 
drifted  over  to  the  Conservative  benches  of  the  House.  He  watched  his 
opportunity,  and  that  opportunity  came  in  his  debate  with  Peel.  He  sprang 
open  like  an  automatic  knife,  and  cut  his  way  to  the  ministerial  heart. 
Henceforth,  to  the  day  of  his  death,  he  was  always  the  idol  of  the  old 
landed  aristocracy  of  Great  Britain  and  of  her  majesty  the  queen. 

We  have  referred  to  the  many  important  measures  that  arose  at  this 
juncture  in  Parliament.  Among  these  was  the  question  of  revising  the 
navigation  laws.  The  scheme  for  doing  so  was  prepared  by  Labouchere, 
President  of  the  Board  of  Trade.  It  grew  out  of  the  abrogation  of  the 
restrictions  that  had  so  long  existed  on  English  industry  and  commerce. 
Making  trade  free  implied  the  opening  of  ocean  navigation  on  terms  of 
equality  for  every  sort  of  merchandise.  The  proposed  law  reserved  for  the 
crown  the  prerogative  of  restricting  the  commercial  intercourse  with  foreign 
nations  when  such  a  course  should  be  suggested  by  the  safety  or  the 
interest  of  the  State.  The  measure  also  included  a  concession  to  the 
British  colonies  of  opening  their  coast  trade  on  terms  of  equality  to  foreign 


i6o 


LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 


merchantmen.  Finally  the  act  provided  for  the  institution  of  a  Depart- 
ment of  the  Marine  in  the  g-overnment,  at  the  head  of  which  was  to  be 
placed  one  of  the  lords  of  the  admiralty.  All  of  this  seemed  natural  and 
inevitable  to  the  Liberals,  with  wdiom  Gladstone  had  now  begun  to  act  ;  but 
it  seemed  odious  to  the  Conservatives  of  the  old  school.     The  opposition 


IN   HIS   YOUTH, 


threw  every  possible  objection  in  speech  and  obstacle  in  politics  in  the  way 
of  the  passage  of  the  measure. 

It  devolved  on  William  E.  Gladstone  more  than  any  other  to  defend 
the  measure  of  the  government.  Though  not  a  minister,  he  must  act  with 
the  ministry  as  the  lieutenant  of  Sir  Robert  Peel,  and  indeed  in  the  promo- 
tion of  his  own  views.  In  the  course  of  the  debate  he  delivered  one  of  his 
principal  parliamentary  orations.     It  was  on  the  29th  of  May,  1848,  that  he 


REPRESENTATIVE    OF    OXFORD    UNIVERSITY.  l6l 

addressed  the  House  on  the  subject.  His  burden  was  to  estabHsh  the 
practicability  and  desirability  for  repealing  the  current  marine  code  and 
instituting  another  system  of  commerce  on  the  seas.  In  the  outset,  he 
admitted  that  the  project  of  the  government  was  not  unexceptionable.  It 
was  subject  to  criticism.  Such  admission  had  now  become  a  part  of  the 
Gladstonian  method.  It  accorded  well  with  his  temperament  to  allow 
much  in  his  arguments  in  order  to  establish  or  suggest  that  slow  and  con- 
servative progress  in  affairs  without  noticing  w'hich  it  is  impossible  to 
understand  and  interpret  his  career. 

He  thought  in  this  instance  that  government  had  been  too  precipitant. 
Slower  methods  would  have  been  more  sure.  In  one  passage  he  laid,  in 
part,  the  foundation  of  what  was  destined  to  be  an  almost  lifelong  dislike 
on  the  part  of  the  queen.  Observe  that  all  sovereigns  desire  the  enlarge- 
ment and  confirmation  of  their  prerogatives.  They  seem  to  think — that  is, 
they  flatter  themselves  into  thinking — that  the  interests  of  their  subjects  will 
be  best  promoted  by  increasing  the  power  of  the  crown  ;  this  in  the  face  of 
the  fact  that  history,  if  she  have  wrought  at  any  one  problem  for  centuries, 
has  been  steadily  engaged  in  the  work  of  reducing — as  she  will  ultimately 
extingiLish — the  prerogatives  of  all  crowns  whatsoever. 

The  new  Navigation  Bill  contained  a  clause  conferring  on  her  majesty 
a  large  discretionary  power  as  to  the  rules  regulating  foreign  commerce. 
This  part  of  the  measure  Gladstone  opposed.  He  thought  that  there  was 
a  great  objection  to  conferring  such  a  power  on  government.  Even  though 
the  queen  be  surrounded  by  the  privy  council,  her  government  should  not 
be  empowered  to  act  in  the  proposed  legislative  capacity.  For  himself,  he 
should  not  concede  such  an  enlargement  of  the  regal  prerogatives.  No 
doubt  it  had  been  better  if  the  ministerial  measure  had  been  less  radical. 
The  proposed  legislation  seemied  to  him  to  abolish  too  much  of  the  past  for 
the  mere  pleasure  of  instituting  the  untried  in  its  place.  He  also  called 
attention  to  what  he  considered  the  unwise  provision  by  which  the  coasting 
trade  was  excluded  from  the  general  scheme.  In  this  part  of  the  debate  he 
hinted  at  the  intercommercial  relations  between  England  and  America.  He 
said  in  words  that  it  would  be  well  to  admit  free  the  American  merchant- 
men, if  our  country  w^ould  in  turn  do  the  same  for  British  ships.  In  one 
strong  and  courageous  passage  he  declared  his  preference  for  such  naviga- 
tion laws  as  would  make  the  high  seas  as  free  for  all  innocent  commerce 
as  are  the  winds  and  tides.  For  his  part,  he  hoped  to  live  to  see  such  a 
time  ;  and  he  hoped  also  that  Great  Britain  would  lead  the  way  to  the  end 
that  the  ocean  might  become  as  free  as  the  land. 

It  became  evident  that  the  bill  of  the  President  of  the  Board  of  Trade 
had  a  majority  in  its  favor  ;  but  the  opposition  was  active,  and  the  measure 
at  length  went  over  to  the  next  year.  It  then  came  to  a  direct  issue. 
II 


l62  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

Gladstone  spoke  a  second  time  on  the  proposed  act  in  the  session  of  1849. 
He  again  upheld  the  ministry,  pointing  out,  however,  such  defects  in  the 
governmental  measures  as  he  discovered.  He  again  approached  the  question 
from  the  side  of  facts  and  figures.  The  year  that  had  elapsed  enabled  him 
to  show  the  House  that  the  relaxation  of  the  former  maritime  code  had 
already  produced  a  favorable  result.  The  prophecies  of  the  opposition, 
made  in  an  academic  way,  had  not  been  verified.  The  carrying  trade  of 
England  had  within  the  last  twelvemonth  considerably  increased.  If  the 
shipowners  and  shipbuilders  had  been  or  should  be  injured  by  the  passage 
of  the  Navigation  Act,  then  the  principle  of  compensation  might  be 
judiciously  applied.  For  his  own  part  he  would  set  an  example  of  free 
commerce.  He  would  not  proceed  tentatively  and  by  reciprocity  only,  but 
actually  and  openly.  England  might  recognize  the  favorable  legislation  of 
foreign  States  ;  but  England  should  nevertheless  go  forward  on  her  own 
lines  of  progress  and  expansion.  He  did  not  believe  that  conditional  and 
experimental  legislation  was  wise  under  existing  conditions.  He  criti- 
cised again  the  part  of  the  act  which  related  to  the  coasting  trade  of  Great 
Britain.  Government  might  well  declare  the  coasting  trade  open  to 
America,  and  America  would  come  to  see  the  advantage  of  a  correlative 
measure  for  herself  He  did  not  doubt  that  Australia,  Canada,  and  India 
were  favorable  to  a  repeal  of  the  navigation  laws.  On  the  whole,  he  pre- 
ferred that  the  clause  relating  to  the  coasting  trade  should  be  stricken  out  ; 
but  he  was  willing,  if  it  should  be  deemed  necessary,  to  support  the  bill  as  a 
whole.  The  fears  of  the  opposition  had  little  ground.  Some  of  the 
speakers  had  called  the  proposed  act  a  second  horse  of  Troy  about  to  be 
hauled  in  through  the  walls.  There  was  no  danger  of  such  an  apparition. 
Vague  prophecies  of  harm  to  come  were  born  of  the  imagination,  and 
would  never  take  corporeal  form.  Great  Britain  had  a  destiny  which  under 
Providence  she  would  fulfill,  all  evil  prognostications  to  the  contrary  not- 
withstanding. 

Meanwhile  the  Commission  on  Customs  made  a  report  which  tended  to 
confirm  Gladstone's  contention  with  regard  to  the  part  of  the  bill  relating 
to  the  coasting  trade.  Seeing  that  the  revenue  would  be  endangered,  the 
ministry  agreed  to  modify  the  act  in  the  direction  indicated  by  Gladstone. 
Henry  Labouchere  changed  the  bill  in  about  ten  particulars,  and  Gladstone, 
though  not  wholly  satisfied  and  though  unwilling  himself  to  offer  a  substi- 
tute for  the  whole,  agreed  to  support  the  modified  measure. 

This  concession  on  the  part  of  the  President  of  the  Board  of  Trade, 
and  this  pliancy  on  the  part  of  Gladstone  gave  opportunity  for  another  out- 
burst by  the  sarcastic  and  imaginative  Disraeli.  He  came  to  the  attack  in 
one  of  his  best  moods.  He  called  attention  of  the  House  to  the  retreat  of 
Labouchere  and  the  complacency  of  Gladstone.     The  conduct  of  the  two 


REPRESENTATIVE    OF    OXFORD    UNIVERSITY.  1 63 

in  making  supposititious  sacrifices  of  personal  opinion  before  the  public  and 
for  the  ostensible  good  of  the  country,  reminded  him  of  that  day  in  the 
French  Revolution  when  the  priests  and  nobles  marching  together  threw 
off  their  miters  and  coronets,  making  believe  that  they  were  at  one  not  only 
with  each  other,  but  with  the  third  estate  and  all  mankind.  That  day  had 
passed  into  history  under  the  name  of  the  Day  of  Dupes  !  It  was  to  be 
hoped  that  the  coquetting  and  jowling  of  statesmen  in  the  British  Parlia- 
ment would  not  too  vividly  recall  to  memory  the  historical  Day  of  Dupes. 
The  speaker  declared  that  the  bill  was  already  in  a  paralytic  condition.  He 
called  attention,  in  the  manner  of  all  opposition  speakers,  to  the  distressed 
state  of  the  country.  The  evil  day  had  come  through  the  precipitancy 
and  recklessness  of  government — a  course  by  which  the  best  interests 
of  the  people  had  been  sacrificed.  Persistency  irt  such  a  course  must 
imperil,  if  it  had  not  already  imperiled,  the  institutions  of  the  empire.  He 
paid  his  respects  in  particular  to  Mr.  Gladstone  for  trying  to  make  an 
impossible  explanation  of  his  course  with  respect  to  pending  legislation. 
Even  the  pledges  of  that  gentleman  had  not  been  fulfilled.  After  making 
his  argument,  he  had  refused  to  follow  his  own  deductions.  His  present  atti- 
tude was  that  of  total  inconsistency,  etc.  The  ministry  did  not  indeed, 
according  to  Mr.  Disraeli,  care  for  Mr.  Gladstone,  except  to  use  him  as  an 
instrument  of  its  purpose,  and  then  to  cast  him  overboard  as  an  obstacle. 

Mr.  Gladstone,  thus  criticised,  replied  with  much  success.  He  denied 
that  he  had  failed  in  the  matter  of  his  pledges.  He  appealed  to  the  House 
to  verify  the  assertion  that  he  had  in  the  beginning  of  the  discussion 
openly  reserved  to  himself  the  privilege  of  acting  on  his  own  judgment  as 
to  the  various  features  of  the  pending  act.  He  thought  the  measure  of  the 
government  one  of  great  importance,  and  notwithstanding  many  of  his  per- 
sonal views  he  was  supporting  that  measure  as  likely  to  be  of  advantage  to 
his  country.  Perhaps  his  concessive  attitude  to  the  interests  of  the  country, 
even  as  against  himself,  was  the  thing  which  had  roused  the  sarcastic  spirit 
of  the  gentleman  on  the  other  side.  That  gentleman  would  perhaps  not 
hesitate  to  take  advantage  of  one  who  was  conscientiously  following  the 
train  of  duty  provided  thereby  he  might  exercise  his  brilliant  wit.  Free 
trade  might  be  made  a  subject  of  sarcasm,  but  that  policy  nevertheless  had 
by  the  goodness  of  Providence  exercised  a  marked  and  immeasurable 
influence  for  eood  on  the  destinies  of  Great  Britain. 

Thus  with  debate  and  counterdebate  the  question  finally  came  to  an 
issue,  and  in  June  of  1849  ^^  t)ill  was  passed.  The  vote  showed  that  the 
ministry,  supported  by  Mr.  Gladstone  and  others  of  independent  turn,  was 
still  upheld  by  a  good  working  majority. 


164  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 


CHAPTER  X. 

Beginnings  of  the  Church  Question. 

[EANWHILE  the  rising  questions  of  religion  and  of  organized 
ecclesiasticism  in  its  relations  to  the  State  came  ever  and 
anon  to  the  fore.  Now  it  was  Catholic  and  Jew,  and  now 
Jew  and  Catholic.  The  old  strict  construction,  whereby  the 
Church  of  England  must  be  upheld,  all  other  parties  to  the 
contrary  notwithstanding,  was  hardly  any  longer  practical  or  even  possible. 
The  spirit  of  the  age  forbade  it.  Catholic  Ireland  lay  darkly  banked  across 
the  Channel. 

In  the  year  1846  Cardinal  Maria  Mastai  Ferretti  was  raised  to  the 
papal  chair,  with  the  title  of  Pius  IX.  He  was  already  in  his  fifty-fifth 
year  ;  but  his  eye  was  not  dimmed  nor  his  natural  force  abated.  No  pope 
of  the  late  centuries  had  been  equally  ambitious.  He  began  his  reign  as  a 
Liberal.  He  proclaimed  amnesty  for  political  offenses.  Prisons  were  opened, 
and  the  persecuted  went  free.  His  generosity  extended  even  to  the  Jews. 
He  constituted  a  lay  commission  to  consider  the  questions  of  reform.  In 
1847  he  published  a  Consultuni  by  which  a  Council  of  State  was  established 
to  assist  him  in  his  government.  True,  the  college  of  cardinals  still  held 
a  check  on  the  pope  and  his  measures.  The  acts  of  his  council  could  not 
become  valid  until  they  were  approved  by  the  college  ;  but  the  effects  of 
the  movement  tended  to  raise  the  papacy  in  the  esteem  and  expectation  of 
Protestant  nations. 

In  the  British  Parliament  a  bill  was  introduced  to  establish  diplomat- 
ical  relations  with  the  court  of  Rome.  Such  an  act  was  against  the  long- 
standing policy  and  prejudice  of  England.  Mr.  Gladstone  spoke  on  this 
question,  and  favored  the  proposed  measure.  He  who  had  written  The 
State  in  its  Relations  with  the  Church  had  already  gone  so  far  toward  liber- 
alism that  he  advocated  the  proposed  recognition  of  the  See  of  Rome! 
He  called  attention  to  the  fact  that  from  the  sixteenth  to  the  seventeenth 
century  the  papal  power  had  sought  by  stratagem  and  war  to  regain  its 
hold  on  the  British  isles.  The  people  of  England  had  resisted  such  foreign 
domination,  and  in  resisting  had  renounced  all  political  recognition  of  the 
papacy.  But  the  original  conditions  had  now  passed  away.  The  Inhibitory 
statutes  against  Rome  need  not  longer  stand  a  menace  to  the  progress  and 
enlightenment  of  the  nineteenth  century.  Parliament  had  recently  shown 
its  consideration  for  Rome  in  the  Maynooth  College  Bill.  If  it  had  become 
necessary  to  hold  amicable  relations  with  the  Roman  Catholics  of  Ireland 
there  was  a  logical  necessity  of  recognizing  that  power  with  which  the 
Irish   Catholics  were  In  such   close  ecclesiastical   affiliation.      He  mioht   be 


BEGINNINGS    OF    THE    CHURCH    QUESTION. 


165 


charged  with  inconsistencies.  He  might  be  misunderstood  and  misrepre- 
sented. It  might  be  charged  that  he  held  in  mind  some  future  p7'oject 
relative  to  the  Irish  Church.  By  all  these  considerations,  however,  he 
should  not  be  moved  to  refuse  his  support  to  the  pending  measure.  Nor 
will  the  reader  fail  to  note  in  what  the  speaker  hinted  at  in  a  possible  future 
policy  respecting  the  Irish  Catholics  the  shadowy  outline  and  suggestions 
of  Disestablishment.     Gladstone  was  already  a  Liberal. 

The  same  tendency  was  shown  on  several  occasions  when  the  question 


LORD   ELGIN. 


of  the  Jews  obtruded  itself  before  the  House.  The  old  oath  which  a 
member  of  Parliament  must  take  required  him  to  qualify  "  on  the  true  faith 
of  a  Christian."  How  could  a  Jew  swear  on  the  true  faith  of  a  Christian  } 
The  bar  seemed  to  be  absolute  against  every  true  Israelite,  and  surmount- 
able only  by  him  of  casuistical  disposition  and  most  elastic  conscience. 
Gladstone  said,  in  one  debate  of  this  session,  that  the  Jew  ought  not  any 
longer  in  justice  to  be  prevented  from  sitting  in  the  House  of  Commons 
on  account  of  the   diversity  of  his  religious  views   from  those  of  orthodox 


1 66  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E,    GLADSTONE. 

Christians.  For  his  part  he  would  not  have  oaths  taken  carelessly  or  in  a 
loose  sense.  Out  of  such  usage  mere  formalism  and  moral  indifference 
would  spring.  For  his  part  he  favored  the  retention  of  the  words  "  on  the 
true  faith  of  a  Christian  "  for  all  members  who  were  Christian,  but  the  omis- 
sion of  the  qualifying  clause  for  such  as  had  not  the  Christian  profession. 

Another  aspect  of  the  ecclesiastical  business  was  the  offering  in  the 
House  of  a  sort  of  academic  resolution  to  the  effect  that  the  poor  as  well  as 
the  rich  ought  to  have  equal  religious  privileges,  or  else  be  excused  from  the 
payment  of  the  Church  rates.  No  Church  opportunity  no  pay,  was  the  prin- 
ciple of  the  thing  declared.  Such  a  proposition  arose  out  of  the  gross 
abuses  which  had  come  to  pass  in  the  Establishment.  The  Episcopal 
churches  were  filled  with  the  well  to  do.  The  well  to  do  preoccupied  and 
held  the  pews.  The  masses  went  unfed  with  the  bread  of  instruction  and 
comfort.  As  a  matter  of  fact  property  had  here,  as  ever,  triumphed  over 
life.  The  man  was  counted  out  in  order  that  the  estate  might  have  a  sit- 
ting-. AH  Church  members  ouQ^ht  to  have  the  rio-ht  of  the  sittinc;  or  be 
excused  from  paying  the  rates.  So  said  Gladstone  in  one  of  his  speeches. 
While  not  supporting  an  abstract  and  therefore  inane  proposition,  he 
nevertheless  hoped  that  practical  reform  would  be  attained,  that  the  abuse 
complained  of  might  be  abolished,  that  the  rights  of  the  humble  as  well  as 
of  the  powerful  middle  classes  to  sittings  in  the  churches  should  be  recog- 
nized and  enforced. 

By  this  time  the  conditions  in  Canada  had  become  positively  alarming. 
Montreal  was  threatened  with  subversion  by  mobs.  A  recent  Bill  of 
Indemnity  for  Losses  in  the  late  rebellion  had  been  passed  and  approved 
by  Lord  Elgin,  Governor  General  of  the  Dominion.  The  Liberals  had 
supported  this  measure  against  strenuous  opposition.  Tories  and  Conserv^- 
atives  succeeded  in  producing  such  a  condition  of  public  opinion  that  the 
governor  general  was  stoned  and  the  Parliament  House  assailed  by  rioters. 
The  echo  of  the  tumult  reached  England.  The  ministry  was  greatly 
embarrassed.  The'  Conservatives  stood  in  with  the  opposition  to  Lord 
Elgin  in  Canada.  It  was  proposed  to  vote  the  means  for  upholding  the 
constituted  authorities  ;  but  the  opposition  assailed  such  proposal  on  the 
ground  that  the  very  money  which  was  to  be  voted  for  the  purpose  named 
was  the  money  of  Canada,  collected  from  her  revenues.  Parliament  was 
about  to  put  itself  in  the  position  of  suppressing  the  Canadian  populace 
with  their  own  resources  ! 

On  the  14th  of  June  in  this  year  (1849)  Gladstone  offered  a  resolution 
and  spoke  on  the  Canadian  imbroglio.  He  urged  that  the  condition  in 
Canada  warranted  the  interference  of  the  home  authorities.  He  denounced 
the  Indemnity  Bill,  because,  as  he  alleged,  it  gave  opportunity  to  those 
who  had  committed  treason  to  reimburse  themselves  for  their  losses.     The 


BEGINNINGS    OF    THE    CHURCH    QUESTION.  167 

people  of  Canada  had  not  had  an  opportunity  to  pass  judgment  on  that 
bill.  He  would  have  the  government  to  refuse  all  compensation  to  those 
who  had  been  in  actual  rebellion.  Those  claiming  benefits  must  be  able 
to  establish  the  fact  that  they  had  not  participated  in  the  insurrection. 
He  should  favor  the  giving  of  an  opportunity  to  the  Legislature  of  Canada 
to  pass  on  the  Indemnity  Bill  before  declaring  its  ratification  by  Parliament. 

The  speech  was  not  at  all  satisfactory  to  the  ministry.  Lord  John 
Russell  declared  that  government  must  uphold  the  Act  of  Indemnity,  and 
that  the  view  expressed  by  Gladstone  would  tend  to  anarchy  in  Canada. 
Mr.  Gladstone's  proposition  to  suspend  the  assent  of  the  crown  until  the 
Colonial  Legislature  should  have  opportunity  to  consider  the  measure  was 
not  sustained  by  a  majority,  and  the  Indemnity  Act  was  passed  and  ratified 
by  the  queen. 

In  the  meantime  the  opinion  was  gaining  ground  that  a  general  colo- 
nial reform  should  be  instituted.  A  bill  to  this  effect  was  presented  by  Mr. 
Roebuck,  or  rather  he  sought  the  privilege  of  introducing  such  a  bill,  and 
on  this  issue  Gladstone  again  addressed  the  House.  He  urged  the  propri- 
ety of  a  general  reform,  and  thought  the  time  had  now  come  that  a  bill 
proceeding  from  the  Colonial  Office  should  be  prepared  and  sent  to  the 
colonies  for  consideration.  This  view,  however,  was  not  supported,  though 
a  respectable  minority  voted  in  its  favor.  After  a  few  days  Sir  W.  Moles- 
worth  returned  to  the  question,  moving  an  address  to  the  queen.  He 
would  have  her  majesty  institute  a  commission  to  inquire  into  the  methods 
pursued  by  her  servants  in  the  conduct  of  the  colonial  governments.  The 
resolution  recited  the  evidences  of  distrust  and  dissatisfaction  in  the  various 
outlying  provinces  of  Great  Britain.  The  colonial  governments  were  too 
expensive.  They  did  not  afford  freedom  to  the  industries  and  enterprises 
of  the  people.  The  administration  abroad  was  of  a  kind  to  discourage  that 
colonizing  disposition  of  the  British  people  which  was  one  of  the  greatest 
evidences  of  their  enterprise — one  of  the  strongest  proofs  of  their  courage 
and  capacity. 

Gladstone  again  came  to  the  support  of  this  view.  Mr.  Hume  rallied 
also.  Both  contended  that  the  time  was  opportune  for  an  improvement  in 
the  colonial  system  of  the  empire.  It  was  not  only  the  Canadian  imbroglio 
that  would  justify  the  action  of  government  in  undertaking  a  renovation  of 
the  colonial  system.  Many  abuses  had  been  brought  out  from  other  gov- 
ernments, suggesting  a  change  in  policy.  It  was  indeed  necessary  to  pre- 
vent a  severance  of  colonial  interest  from  that  of  the  home  government. 
Civil,  social,  and  political  connection  ought  to  be  maintained  between  the 
imperial  government  and  all  of  its  dependencies.  It  was,  however,  of 
still  paramount  importance  that  the  affectionate  sympathies  of  the  pro- 
vincials and   the   home    subjects  of  the    crown   should  be  upheld.     These 


1 68  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

arguments,  however,  were  unavailing,  and  the  Wolesworth  proposition  was 
also  voted  down. 

Up  to  this  date  the  ancient  ecclesiasticism  had  been  able  to  maintain 
its  ascendency  over  the  domestic  life  of  Englishmen.  The  Episcopal 
Church  was  as  strict  as  Rome  in  following  the  canonical  view  respecting 
marriage.  The  principle  of  marrying  out  of  kinship  and  affinity  was  stoutly 
upheld.  Of  all  the  points  where  the  interdicts  fretted  most  against  usage 
that  which  forbade  the  marriage  by  a  man  with  his  deceased  wife's  sister 
was  hardest.  It  appeared  to  the  old  imagination  of  man  that  to  take  two 
sisters  successively  in  the  marriage  relation  was  little  less  than  incestuous. 

It  were  hard  to  say  upon  what  ground  this  opinion  is  ultimately  based. 
Certain  it  is  that  human  preference,  affection,  or  caprice  Avill  often  liead  the 
wifeless  husband  to  choose  in  second  marriage  the  sister  of  his  former 
spouse.  In  the  session  of  1849  Mr.  Stuart  Wortley  brought  in  a  bill  to 
remove  the  legal  interdict  against  such  unions.  The  law  civil  in  this  case 
coincided  with  the  law  canonical.  Of  course  the  whole  religious  order  rose 
in  insurrection  against  the  proposed  change.  Gladstone's  views  had  been 
much  modified  as  they  respected  the  Church  Establishment,  but  hardly 
changed  at  all  with  respect  to  ultimate  religious  principles.  He  lifted  his 
voice  In  opposition  to  the  proposed  measure.  He  thought  it  to  be  against 
the  interests  of  society,  as  well  as  Immoral.  Certainly  It  was  against  theo- 
logical doctrines. 

The  speaker  believed  that  it  was  also  against  the  deep-seated  opinions 
of  the  English  people.  Parliament  should  hardly  undertake  to  promote  a 
measure  that  antagonized  the  sentiment  and  conscience  of  England.  Such 
a  bill  would  work  utter  confusion  In  the  Church.  The  Church,  by  its  min- 
isters, must  continue  to  refuse  to  solemnize  marriages  forbidden  by  canon- 
ical law.  If  the  Wortley  Bill  should  pass  there  would  be  a  double  system 
of  marriage  ;  that  is,  a  merely  legal  system  opposing  itself  to  the  religious 
marriage  which  the  people  of  England  believed  in  as  essential  to  the  pres- 
ervation of  the  purity  of  domestic  life.  The  speaker's  argument  in  this  vein 
prevailed,  and  the  bill  proposed  by  Mr.  Wortley  was  voted  down. 

The  next  parliamentary  episode  in  the  statesman's  career  belongs  to 
the  session  of  1850.  He  was  now  forty-one  years  of  age.  Benjamin  Disraeli 
was  five  years  older.  The  two  men  were  unlike  In  everything  except 
ambition  and  the  ability  to  lead.  A  contingency  arose  at  this  juncture  that 
brought  them  together.  England  at  the  middle  of  our  century  was  In  a  very 
similar  condition,  Industrially  and  economically,  to  that  of  the  United 
States  five  decades  afterward.  Both  nations  had  been  long  under  a  pro- 
tective system  of  Industry.  In  the  older  country  such  protection  had  spread 
out  Its  wing  over  the  agricultural  Interest,  and  manufactures  were  left  to 
care  for  themselves.     The  English  Industrial  body  might  be  looked  upon  as 


BEGINNINGS    OF    THE    CHURCH    QUESTION.  169 

divided  on  a  medial  line,  the  one  half  being  stimulation  and  the  other  half 
lazsSeZ'  fa  ire. 

In  our  country  the  situation  was  the  same,  except  that  the  two  sides  of 
the  body  industrial  were  reversed.  In  our  case  the  stimulated  side  has  been 
the  manufacturino-  side,  and  the  agrricultural  the  laissez  faire.  Both  nations, 
one  a  half  century  after  the  other,  gave  up,  the  one  ?n  toto  and  the  other  in 
part,  the  high  protective  tariff.  The  change  in  both  cases  tended  to  confirm, 
establish,  and  perpetuate  an  aristocracy  of  wealth.  W^ithout  inquiring  here 
whether  the  one  system  or  the  other  is  superior,  we  may  safely  allege  that 
the  change  ushered  in  the  evil  day.  Society,  in  England  and  America  alike, 
went  more  than  ever  to  extremes.  Particularly  in  England,  after  the  pas- 
sage of  that  legislation  which  we  have  been  considering  through  many  pre- 
ceding pages,  did  the  numbers  of  the  poor  increase.  Hardship  came,  and 
with  it  the  Outcry  of  poverty.  The  two  parties  in  British  politics — after  the 
condition  of  distress  was  once  admitted  to  exist — charged  each  the  other,  or 
the  other's  theory  of  economics,  with  the  evil  results.  The  Liberals  said  that 
the  condition  was  simply  the  aftermath  of  the  unjust  system  of  industrial 
economy  that  had  long  existed,  and  which  we,  the  Liberals,  have  at  length 
with  so  much  toil  and  patriotism  suppressed.  The  Conservatives  charged 
that  the  free  trade,  or  as  Disraeli  designated  it,  "  the  freebooting  of  the 
Manchester  school,"  had  done  the  devilment. 

At  any  rate  distress  existed,  with  endless  contradiction  as  to  the  causes  of 
it.  On  the  19th  of  February,  1850,  Disraeli,  leader  of  the  old  protective  landed 
aristocracy,  offered  a  resolution  that  the  House  of  Commons  go  into  com- 
mittee of  the  whole  to  consider  a  revision  of  the  poor  laws  of  the  United 
Kingdom,  to  the  end  that  the  distresses  of  the  agricultural  folk  might  be 
alleviated.  On  the  side  of  the  ministry  this  resolution  was  antagonized  by 
Gladstone's  friend.  Sir  James  Graham.  Gladstone  himself,  however,  spoke 
in  favor  oi  Disraeli's  resolution.  Albeit,  he  did  so,  from  the  opposite 
point  of  view.  Disraeli  began  to  the  effect  that  the  sufferings  of  the  agricul- 
tural classes  of  Great  Britain  must  be  assuaged — and  the  cause  of  the  distress 
was  free  trade.  Gladstone  also  took  the  position  that  the  suffering  classes 
must  be  relieved ;  but  the  free-trade  policy  which  had  recently  been  adopted 
was  not  the  origin  of  such  sufferinof.  If  indeed  the  motion  of  the  grentleman 
opposite  implied  the  abandonment  of  free  trade,  then  he  (Gladstone)  would 
not  support  that  motion. 

In  many  particulars  the  arguments  of  the  two  lifelong  antagonists  ran 
on  this  occasion  in  the  same  channel.  Both  agreed  that  a  part  of  the  ex- 
pense of  aiding  the  poor  might  be  charged  up  to  the  division  of  the  revenue 
known  as  the  Consolidated  Fund.  There  was  also  agreement  on  the  prin- 
ciple of  local  control  of  the  poor  funds.  Gladstone  took  the  position  that 
these  measures  were  distinct  and  apart  from  any  return,  or  effort  to  return,  to 


170  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

the  principle  of  protection.  Sir  James  Graham  had  said  that  he  would 
oppose  the  pending  measure  because  it  was  a  measure  fraught  with  injustice. 
Gladstone  for  his  part  would  defend  it  on  the  ground  that  it  was  a  measure 
of  justice.  Certainly  there  was  a  want  of  equity  in  the  existing  laws  ;  for 
the  taxes  for  the  support  of  the  poor  were  not  laid  with  an  equal  hand  on 
all.  It  was  possible  that  a  tax  of  this  kind  could  not  be  made  perfect  in 
equity.  Parliament  ought  to  pass  a  measure  as  near  perfection  as  might  be 
in  the  imperfect  conditions  of  society. 

The  speaker  pointed  out  that  the  landed  properties  had  long  been 
burdened  with  the  poor  tax.  This  condition  had  come  down  by  inheritance 
to  the  present  owners.  Now  that  the  agricultural  interest  was  suffering 
the  cry  of  that  interest  ought  to  be  heard,  and  the  taxes  more  equally  laid 
on  all  kinds  of  property.  He  was  anxious  to  see  the  agriculturists,  the 
poor  men  of  the  English  farms,  relieved  of  at  least  a  part  of  the  burdens 
which  they  bore.  In  any  event  the  Commons  must  here  and  now  inquire 
diligently  into  the  existing  poverty  and  its  causes,  so  that  in  all  parts  of  the 
empire,  whether  at  home  or  abroad,  the  suffering  might  be  relieved  by 
rational  and  humane  legislation.  Gladstone  said  that  a  liberal  and  con- 
ciliatory spirit  ought  to  be  shown  to  all.  There  was  in  the  pending  ques- 
tion an  element  of  humanity  that  was  to  be  considered  as  much  as  exact 
justice.  Evidently  the  farmers  and  poor  people  of  the  country  were  strug- 
gling to  attain  and  hold  a  place  of  independence  in  the  social  order  of  Great 
Britain,  and  in  so  doing  they  were  entitled  to  the  sympathies  and  support 
of  the  best  men  of  all  parties. 

This  speech  carried  great  weight,  as  was  seen  in  the  result.  Disraeli's 
proposition,  supported  by  Gladstone,  was  within  twenty-one  votes  of 
carrying  against  the  ministry.  As  the  destinies  of  English  history  were 
prepared  it  was  not  fixed  that  the  two  most  distinguished  political  leaders 
of  the  age  should  often  be  found  in  cooperation.  Only  at  rare  intervals 
did  their  tempers  and  policies  concur. 

More  than  ever  at  this  time  did  the  statesmanship  of  England  look 
abroad  to  those  foreign  parts  of  the  empire  which  British  adventure  had 
established  in  distant  countries,  even  to  the  ocean  continent  of  Australia. 
The  latter  country,  beginning  with  penal  establishments,  had  now  grown 
into  an  incipient  State.  The  time  had  arrived  when  Australian  society, 
having  purged  itself  somewhat  of  its  primeval  impurities,  must  needs  have 
a  civil  frame.  It  was  devolved  on  the  ministry  of  Lord  John  Russell  to  con- 
front this  question,  and  that  statesman  set  about  it  with  his  usual  energies. 
His  views  were  incorporated  in  a  measure  for  the  government  of  the 
Australian  colonies.  One  of  the  sharpest  controversies  with  regard  thereto 
arose  on  the  construction  of  the  Australian  Legfislature.  Lord  Russell 
provided    in  his    bill  for  a  single  legislative  chamber,  or  House  of  Com- 


BEGINNINGS    OF    THE    CHURCH    QUESTION.  I7I 

mens  for  each  colony.     This  scheme  did  not  conform  to  the  British  type ; 
for  Great  Britain  had  for  her  part  tivo  houses — the  Commons  and  the  Lords. 

To  have  the  AustraHan  plan  differ  from  that  of  the  mother  country 
seemed  to  intimate  that  the  home  government  was  not  sufficiently  rational, 
and  perhaps  not  sufficiently  democratic.  This  contingency  brought  out  an 
element  in  Gladstone  which  was  native  to  him,  which  had  been  strengthened 
by  his  education,  but  was  weakened  much  by  his  recent  course.  Like  a 
true  Engflishman  he  stood  on  the  old  grround  to  consider  a  while  whether 
anything  else  might  be  as  good  as  the  existing  order.  He  opposed  the 
measure  for  a  single  chamber,  and  favored  two  houses.  If  there  was  no 
Australian  aristocracy  corresponding  to  the  Lords  in  England  then  he  held 
that  either  the  people  might  elect  the  members  of  their  Upper  House  or 
else  the  crown  might  appoint  them.  This  view  of  the  case  accorded  with 
that  of  Horatio  Walpole,  but  the  influence  of  Lord  Russell  was  sufficient 
to  carry  his  measure  through.  At  a  later  stage  of  the  discussion  he  spoke 
again  in  favor  of  a  proposition  to  give  the  colonial  office  a  power  of  veto  over 
bills  which  should  be  passed  by  the  Australian  Assembly.  At  a  still  later 
period  in  the  session  he  brought  forward  a  measure  of  his  own,  to  enlarge 
and  confirm  the  powers  of  the  clergy  and  laity  of  the  Established  Church 
in  determining  local  questions  in  given  dioceses  at  their  own  discretion. 

Very  complicated  and  often  tortuous  were  the  parliamentary  issues  of 
these  days.  On  the  13th  of  May,  1850,  Gladstone  urged  that  certain 
modifications  in  the  Australian  Government  Bill,  which  he  and  others  had 
presented,  should  be  submitted  to  the  colonists  themselves,  and  to  this  end 
he  moved  a  suspension  of  the  passage  of  the  general  bill  until  the  opinion  of 
the  Australians  might  be  learned.  He  again  rehearsed  his  objections  to 
the  pending  act  as  it  then  stood.  He  pressed  his  views  strenuously,  but  in 
vain.  The  Russell  Bill  was  passed  by  a  large  majorit)'.  Nor  may  we  fail  to 
note  that  in  this  passage  with  the  government  Disraeli  returned  the  late 
compliment  of  his  competitor  by  supporting  his  motion. 

As  we  have  said,  the  changed  and  changing  policy  of  Great  Britain 
brought  at  least  temporary  hardships  to  the  producers  of  England  and  her 
colonies.  Out  in  the  West  Indies  the  planters  suffered,  or  imagined  that 
they  suffered,  from  the  abolition  of  slavery.  The  removal  of  the  duties  on 
sugar  had  lowered  the  price  of  that  commodity,  while  the  cost  of  produc- 
tion had  continued  the  same.  Moreover,  America — the  United  States  of 
America — was  at  this  time  with  her  slave  labor  competing  strongly  for  the 
sugar  market  of  the  world.  The  Conservatives  found  in  this  condition  an 
opportunity  of  attack.  They  might  revert  to  the  reckless  abolition  of  slavery 
in  the  West  Indies  as  an  example  of  the  incapacity  of  the  Liberals  to 
govern.  If  we,  the  Conservatives,  had  had  the  responsibility  of  substituting 
free  for  slave  labor  in  the  Indies,  how  carefully  we  should  have  done  it,  and 


172 


LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 


how  much  better  would  have  been  the  results  !  Now  a  radical  government 
had  compelled  the  free  labor  of  Jamaica  to  offer  British  sugar  in  the  world- 
market  in  competition  with  slave-growm  sugar  of  the  United  States. 

A  resolution  was  offered  in  Parliament  by  Sir  Edward  N.  Buxton  to 
this  effect :  "  That  it  is  unjust  and  impolitic  to  expose  the  free-grown  sugar 
of  the  British  colonies  and  possessions  abroad  to  unrestricted  competition 
with  the  sugar  of  foreign  slave-trading  countries."  Superficially  the  motion 
seemed  to  be  inspired  of  right  reason.  It  put  the  ministry  on  the  defensive. 
All  that  could  be  urged  was  that  the  West  Indies  had  already  begun  to 
revive  from  the  period  of  depression,  and  that  the  free  industry  of  British 
subjects  in  those  islands  w^ould  ultimately  prevail  over  all  competition. 

Gladstone,  in  speaking  on  this  question,  took  a  moderate  and  compro- 
mising- view.  He  was  willing;  that  the 
protective  principle  should  be  applied 
in  a  restricted  way,  and  for  a  limited 
time,  to  the  industries  of  the  West 
Indies.  The  case  of  those  islands  was 
different  from  the  general  condition. 
He  denied  strenuously  that  the  aboli- 
tion of  slavery  had  injured  the  British 
possessions  abroad.  It  was  not  that, 
but  the  failure  of  government  to 
follow  up  abolition  with  other  whole- 
some lecfislation.  Parliament  had 
failed  to  take  rational  measures  for 
supplying  the  deficiency  in  the  labor 
of  the  West  Indies  after  the  act  of 
abolition.  For  himself,  he  would  not 
hold  to  a  theory  as  against  a  condi- 
tion ;  but  the  restoration  of  the  pro- 
tective system  could  not  bring  back  to 
the  West  Indies  or  to  any  country  a 
lost  prosperity.  But  he  believed  that  the  reduction  of  duties  on  sugar 
ought  to  be  gradual,  and  that  the  period  of  the  final  extinction  of  the  same 
should  be  prolonged  in  the  interest  of  the  Jamaican  planters. 

At  this  juncture  the  distinguished  Henry  John  Temple,  Lord  Palmer- 
ston,  appeared  in  the  debate.  He  attacked  right  and  left,  touching  upon 
the  incongruities  in  Gladstone's  speech.  That  gentleman,  he  urged,  was  a 
champion  of  free  trade.  He  had  promoted  the  abolition  of  the  protective 
system  in  Great  Britain  ;  but  now  when  the  shoe  pinched  he  was  favoring 
at  least  the  partial  perpetuation  of  the  protective  system  in  the  Indies. 
These  comments  were  at  least  superficially  effective,  and  Gladstone  had  to 


SPENCER   HORATIO    WALPOLE. 


BEGINNINGS    OF    TME    CHURCH    QUESTION.  I  73 

ware  right  and  ware  left  to  save  himself  from  the  charge  of  inconsistency. 
The  Buxton  resolution  was  indeed  rejected,  but  the  majority  against  it  was 
reduced  to  forty-one  votes. 

It  is  in  the  nature  of  political  parties  to  torment  the  one  the  other 
all  they  can.  They  take  every  advantage  of  conditions  to  put  each  other, 
never  up,  but  always  dowMi.  At  the  parliamentary  session  of  1850  the 
troublesome  question  of  the  English  and  Irish  universities  was  again 
brought  before  the  House  of  Commons.  The  question  of  religion  was 
always  at  the  bottom  of  such  issues.  In  this  case  a  motion  was  made  by  a 
Mr.  Heyvvood  to  inquire  into  the  state  of  the  higher  institutions  of  learning 
in  both  England  and  Ireland.  A  royal  committee  was  appointed,  with  the 
assent  of  the  ministry.  Gladstone  spoke  again  on  the  subject.  He  made 
the  point  that  those  about  to  make  bequests  to  the  universities  w^ould  be 
held  back  in  their  generous  intentions  by  a  knowledge  of  the  fact  that  with 
every  change  in  the  British  ministry  the  triumphant  party  might  appoint  a 
committee  to  investigate  the  universities. 

Benefactors  would  not  spring  up  if  the  management  of  their  gifts  was 
to  be  rendered  contemptible  by  such  procedures.  He  admitted,  with  his 
habitual  caution  and  reserve,  that  the  universities  had  not  met  the  highest 
demands  of  the  age.  They  had  not  been  what  they  ought  to  have  been  in 
the  transforming  processes  of  civilization.  But  he  would  also  defend  the 
universities  from  the  aspersions  to  which  they  had  been  subjected.  They 
were  a  part  of  the  history  of  England.  They  were  interwoven  with  the 
intellectual  life  of  the  British  nation.  If  any  additional  supervision  or  inves- 
tigation should  be  demanded  it  were  better  that  the  crown  should  appoint  a 
commission  for  that  office  rather  than  that  the  same  should  be  constituted  by 
a  political  majority  in  the  Commons.  The  present  laws,  if  properly  enforced, 
he  deemed  sufficient  for  the  regulation  of  the  English  universities. 

Just  at  this  time  the  attention  of  statesmen  and  people  alike  was  drawn 
away  from  the  home  affairs  of  Great  Britain  to  the  consideration  of  a 
foreign  complication.  A  difficulty  had  arisen  in  Greece  which  seemed  to 
demand  the  attention  of  Parliament.  The  trouble  in  question  dated  back 
to  the  year  1847.  In  that  year  the  Athenian  government  had  decided  to 
abolish  one  of  the  Greek  Church  ceremonies  known  as  the  burning  of  Judas 
Iscariot.  It  had  become  the  custom  to  make  an  effigy  of  Judas  once  a 
year,  and  to  burn  it  publicly  in  connection  with  the  Easter  celebration. 
The  ceremony  was  usually  accompanied  with  uproarious  and  half-lawless 
amusements.  When  the  abolition  of  the  business  was  proclaimed  there 
was  resistance  among  the  people,  who  were  not  willing  to  give  up  their 
annual  sport.  A  mob  arose  in  Athens,  under  the  leadership  of  two  sons  of 
the  minister  of  war.  Albeit,  the  sense  of  the  mob  was  that  if  they  could 
not  burn  a  factitious  Judas  chey  would  destroy  a  live  one. 


174 


LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 


There  was  resident  in  Athens  at  this  time  a  certain  Jew  called  Don 
Pacifico.  His  house  was  near  by  the  scene  of  the  tumult.  He  was  a  Por- 
tuguese by  descent,  but  being  born  at  Gibraltar  he  had  become  a  citizen  of 
Great  Britain.  His  house  was  attacked  and  destroyed  by  the  Athenian 
insurgents.  He  himself  escaped,  and  presently  made  up  a  list  of  his  losses, 
amounting  to  thirty  thousand  pounds.  He  also  claimed  that  certain  of  his 
papers  showing  an  indebtedness  of  Portugal  to  him  of  many  additional 
thousands   of  pounds    had    been  destroyed.     This  claim  he  also  preferred 


THE    PIR^US,    ATHENS. 


against  the  Greek  government.  His  thrifty  imagination  did  not  stop  at 
trifles.  When  the  Greeks  failed  to  compensate  him  he  appealed  to  the 
British  minister  of  foreign  affairs.  The  minister  indorsed  the  claim,  and 
an  issue  was  thus  made  between  Great  Britain  and  Greece. 

Lord  Palmerston,  Secretary  of  Foreign  Affairs,  demanded  that  payment 
should  be  made  for  damages  done  by  the  mob,  and  when  the  Greek  author- 
ities hesitated  he  ordered  a  British  fleet,  under  Admiral  Sir  William  Parker 
to  blockade  the  Piraeus,  or  seaport  of  Athens,  until  settlement  should  be 
made.  This  was  accordingly  done.  Hereupon  the  opposition  in  the 
British  Parliament  discovered  a  cause  of  offense.     The  action  of  Palmerston 


BEGINNINGS    OF    THE    CHURCH    QUESTION.  I  75 

and  the  admiral  were  loudly  assailed.  It  was  said  that  Great  Britain  had 
stooped  from  her  lofty  estate  to  take  up  the  cause  of  a  Jew  adventurer.  A 
debate  broke  out  for  and  against  the  policy  of  the  government.  Meanwhile, 
France  was  offended  at  the  thing  done,  to  the  extent  that  the  French  ambas- 
sador at  London  was  recalled.  Lord  Palmerston  was  put  on  the  defensive, 
and  the  Whig  ministry  was  about  to  be  pressed  to  the  wall. 

Palmerston  attempted  to  explain  and  parry.  The  matter  was  taken  up 
in  the  House  of  Lords,  and  a  considerable  majority  was  obtained  against 
the  government.  The  ministry  tottered.  In  the  Commons  a  resolution  was 
introduced  in  this  tortuous  form  :  "That  the  principles  which  have  hitherto 
regulated  the  foreign  policy  of  her  majesty's  government  are  such  as  were 
required  to  preserve  untarnished  the  honor  and  dignity  of  this  country,  and, 
in  times  of  unexampled  difficulty,  the  best  calculated  to  maintain  peace 
between  Engrland  and  the  various  nations  of  the  world." 

This  adroit  resolution  gave  to  the  ministers  an  opportunity  to  defend 
themselves.  They  were  attacked,  however,  by  Sir  Robert  Peel  in  the  last 
and  one  of  the  most  memorable  of  his  speeches.  Lord  Palmerston  replied, 
mixing  into  his  argument  a  great  amount  of  such  material  as  in  American 
parlance  would  be  designated  buncombe.  He  paralleled  Great  Britain  and 
Rome.  Time  was  when  to  say  "  I  am  a  Roman  citizen  "  was  to  hold  up  a 
talisman  and  shield  before  him  who  uttered  it,  and  to  make  him  greater 
than  a  king.  So  also  the  citizen  of  Great  Britain  must  be  able  by  declaring 
himself  a  British  subject  anywhere  in  the  world  to  stand  secure  against  all 
violence  and  outrage,  even  in  times  of  tumult  and  lawlessness  and  on  bar- 
barian shores.  There  was  much  of  this  kind  of  appeal,  well  calculated  to 
arouse  the  prejudices  of  all  Britons. 

Gladstone  delivered  on  the  occasion  one  of  his  remarkable  speeches. 
In  some  particulars  it  deserves  to  survive.  At  one  point  especially  he 
boldly  pointed  out  the  national  weakness  of  Englishmen,  who  were,  and 
have  always  been,  disposed  to  bully  mankind  with  their  assumptions,  censo- 
riousness,  and  dictations.  He  spoke  against  the  government.  He  urged 
that  the  ministry  had  cunningly  changed  the  question  debated  in  the  House 
of  Lords,  so  framing  it  as  to  make  another  issue  whereby  they,  the  minis- 
ters, hoped  to  enlist  the  prejudices  of  the  nation.  There  was  not  a  dispo- 
sition on  the  part  of  government  to  discuss  the  real  question  as  between 
Great  Britain  and  the  Greeks.  Precedents  had  been  cited,  said  he,  that 
belonged  to  the  conduct  of  one  great  nation  in  its  relations  with  another 
like  itself.  The  instances  cited  were  not  such  as  a  mighty  government 
should  plead  respecting  its  conduct  toward  a  weak  one.  The  government 
had  centered  all  its  sympathies  on  Don  Pacifico.  Others  besides  he  had 
been  wronged  by  the  Athenian  mob,  but  of  such  wrongs  government  was 
taking  no   account.     It  was  said   that  one  Stellio  Sumachi  had  been  tor- 


176  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

tured  ;  but  his  claim  was  only  twenty  pounds,  while  that  of  Don  Pacifico 
was  thirty  thousand  pounds  !  A  British  subject,  the  historian  Finlay,  dom- 
iciled in  Athens,  had  been  wronged,  and  he  might  have  appealed  for  repara- 
tion to  the  Athenian  courts,  but  he  had  not  done  so. 

The  speaker  admitted  that  the  personal  character  of  Don  Pacifico  had 
not  much  to  do  with  the  validity  or  invalidity  of  his  claim.  He  urged  that 
the  claimant  had  not  availed  himself  of  the  Greek  courts,  but  had  inconti- 
nently gone  to  the  British  minister,  and  that  Admiral  Parker's  violent 
demonstration  had  followed  without  consideration.  The  Greeks  had  been 
subjected  to  reprisals  amounting  to  much  more  than  twice  the  sums  of 
all  the  damages  claimed  !  Great  Britain,  by  the  error  of  government,  had 
put  herself  in  the  attitude  of  bullying  a  weak  and  friendly  State.  The 
policy  of  noninterference  was  a  British  policy,  and  for  this  policy  England 
had  contended  with  foreign  nations  for  centuries.  Now,  however,  the  min- 
istry had  adopted  by  overt  act  the  policy  of  interference — a  policy  which 
she  could  not  follow  without  contradicting  herself  and  her  own  history. 
Internationality  forbade  such  a  violation  of  consistency  and  humanity. 
Lord  Palmerston  had  made  an  appeal  ad  captandmn  to  Englishmen,  and 
had  referred  to  the  pedantic  phrase  of  being  a  Roman  citizen  as  a  panoply 
ao-ainst  injury  throughout  the  world.  It  was  well  enough  to  claim  the  pro- 
tection of  English  citizenship,  but  the  spirit  of  modern  civilization  required 
that  such  claim  should  be  based  on  justice  and  reason  and  truth. 

The  speaker  animadverted  upon  the  conduct  of  Lord  Palmerston  with 
considerable  severity.  "  Sir,"  said  he,  "  I  do  not  understand  the  duty  of  a 
secretary  for  foreign  affairs  to  be  of  such  a  character.  I  understand  it 
to  be  his  duty  to  conciliate  peace  with  dignity.  I  think  it  to  be  the  very 
first  of  all  his  duties  studiously  to  observe  and  to  exalt  in  honor  among 
mankind  that  great  code  of  principles  which  is  termed  the  law  of  nations, 
which  the  honorable  and  learned  member  for  Sheffield  has  found,  indeed, 
to  be  very  vague  in  their  nature  and  greatly  dependent  upon  the  discretion 
of  each  particular  country,  but  in  which  I  find,  on  the  contrary,  a  great  and 
noble  monument  of  human  wisdom,  founded  on  the  combined  dictates  of 
reason  and  experience,  a  precious  inheritance  bequeathed  to  us  by  the  gen- 
erations that  have  gone  before  us,  and  a  firm  foundation  on  which  we  must 
take  care  to  build  whatever  it  may  be  our  part  to  add  to  their  acquisitions,  if 
indeed  we  wish  to  maintain  and  to  consolidate  the  brotherhood  of  nations 
and  to  promote  the  peace  and  welfare  of  the  world. 

"  Sir,  I  say  the  policy  of  the  noble  lord  tends  to  encourage  and  confirm 
us  in  that  which  is  our  besetting  fault  and  weakness,  both  as  a  nation  and 
as  individuals.  Let  an  Englishman  travel  where  he  will  as  a  private  person 
he  is  found  in  general  to  be  upright,  high-minded,  brave,  liberal,  and  true  ; 
but  with  all  this  foreigners  are  too  often  sensible  of  something  that  galls 


BEGINNIN(;S    OF    THE    CHURCH    QUESTION.  177 

them  in  his  presence,  and   I  apprehend   it   is  because   he   has  too  great  a 
tendency  to    self-esteem — too  Httle  disposition   to  regard  the  feehngs,  the 
habits,  and  the  ideas  of  others.     Sir,  I  find  this  characteristic  too  plainly  leg- 
ible in  the  policy  of  the  noble  lord.      I  doubt  not  that  use  will  be  made  of  our 
present  debate  to  work  upon  this  peculiar  weakness  of  the  English  mind. 
The  people  will  be  told  that  those  who  oppose  the  motion  are  governed  by 
personal  motives,  have  no  regard  for  public  principles,  no  enlarged  ideas  of 
national  policy.     You  will  take  your  case  before  a   favorable  jury  and  you 
think  to  gain  your  verdict  ;  but,  sir,  let  the  House  of  Commons  be  warned 
— let    it   warn  itself — against    all  illusions.     There   is    in  this  case,  also,  a 
course  of  appeal.     There   is  an  appeal,  such  as  the  honorable  and  learned 
member  for  Sheffield  has  made,  from  the  one  House  of  Parliament  to  the 
other.     There   is  a   further  appeal  from   this   House  of  Parliament   to    the 
people  of  England  ;  but,  lastly,  there  is  also  an  appeal  from  the  people  ot 
England    to   the   general   sentiment   of  the  civilized   world;  and    I,  for  my 
part,  am  of  opinion  that   England  will   stand   shorn    of  a  chief  part  of  her 
glory  and  pride  if  she  shall  be  found  to  have  separated  herself,  through  the 
policy  she  pursues  abroad,  from  the  moral  supports  which  the  general  and 
fixed  convictions  of  mankind  aff'ord — if  the  day  shall  come  when  she  may 
continue    to  excite  the  wonder  and  the  fear  of  other  nations,  but  in  which 
she  shall  have  no  part  in  their  affection  and  regard. 

"  No,  sir,  let  it  not  be  so  ;  let  us  recognize,  and  recognize  with  frank- 
ness, the  equality  of  the  weak  with  the  strong,  the  principles  of  brotherhood 
among  nations,  and  of  their  sacred  independence.  When  we  are  asking 
for  the  maintenance  of  the  rights  which  belong  to  our  fellow-subjects  resi- 
dent in  Greece,  let  us  do  as  we  would  be  done  by,  and  let  us  pay  all  the 
respect  to  a  feeble  State  and  to  the  infancy  of  free  institutions  which  we  should 
desire  and  should  exact  from  others  toward  their  maturity  and  their  strength. 
Let  us  refrain  from  all  gratuitous  and  arbitrary  meddling  in  the  internal 
concerns  of  other  States,  even  as  we  should  resent  the  same  interference  if 
it  were  attempted  to  be  practised  toward  ourselves.  If  the  noble  lord  has 
indeed  acted  on  these  principles,  let  the  government  to  which  he  belongs 
have  your  verdict  in  its  favor  ;  but  if  he  has  departed  from  them,  as  I  con- 
tend, and  as  I  humbly  think  and  urge  upon  you  that  it  has  been  too  amply 
proved,  then  the  House  of  Commons  must  not  shrink  from  the  performance 
of  its  duty  under  whatever  expectations  of  momentary  obloquy  or  reproach, 
because  we  shall  have  done  what  is  right  ;  we  shall  enjoy  the  peace  of  our 
own  consciences  and  receive,  whether  a  little  sooner  or  a  little  later,  the 
approval  of  the  public  voice  for  having  entered  our  solemn  protest  against 
a  system  of  policy  which  we  believe,  nay,  which  we  know,  whatever  may  be 
its  first  aspect,  must  of  necessity  in  its  final  results  be  unfavorable  even  to 
the  security  of  British  subjects  resident  abroad,  which  it  professes  so  much 


178  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

to  Study — unfavorable  to  the  dignity  of  the  country  which  the  motion  of 
the  honorable  and  learned  member  asserts  it  preserves — and  equally  unfavor- 
able to  that  other  great  and  sacred  object,  which  also  it  suggests  to  our 
recollection,  the  maintenance  of  peace  with  the  nations  of  the  world." 

The  interest  in  the  debate  toward  the  close  was  intense.  It  could 
hardly  be  known  in  advance  whether  the  House  would  sustain  the  ministry 
or,  following  the  lead  of  the  Lords,  condemn  it.  The  result  showed  that 
party  discipline,  combined  with  Palmerston's  adroitness  in  turning  the  dis- 
cussion into  another  channel,  had  prevailed.  The  Whig  ascendency  and  the 
action  of  the  government  were  sustained  by  the  vote,  though  by  only  a 
narrow  majority.  It  was  another  Instance  of  the  mingled  audacity  and 
finesse  of  Lord  Palmerston. 

Scarcely  had  this  question  been  settled  when  the  British  public  was 
shocked  by  the  death  of  Sir  Robert  Peel.  That  statesman  had  been  driving 
out  to  Buckingham  Palace  to  make  a  call  on  the  queen.  Returning  from 
his  visit  he  exchanged  salutations  with  a  lady ;  but  in  the  act  his  horse  shied 
and  threw  Sir  Robert  from  his  carriage.  He  fell  heavily  on  his  shoulder, 
and  a  subsequent  examination  showed  a  fractured  rib  just  over  the  heart. 
He  retained  consciousness,  and  suffered  much  for  three  days,  when  he  sank 
under  the  shock  and  died. 

The  public  sorrow  for  the  loss  of  this  distinguished  Englishman  was 
sincere  and  general.  Fitting  orations  were  delivered  In  both  Houses  of 
Parliament.  The  Duke  of  Wellington  and  Lord  Brougham  spoke  in  the 
Lords,  and  Mr.  Gladstone  and  others  In  the  Commons.  In  Gladstone's 
case  the  eulogy  was  as  much  personal  as  public  In  Its  Inspiration.  He  had 
long  followed  Sir  Robert  Peel  as  his  leader,  and  had  enjoyed  with  him  an 
unclouded  friendship.  True,  he  was  now  rapidly  alttainlng  as  great  and 
lasting  reputation  as  he  whom  he  had  so  long  sustained.  Soon  he  was  to 
surpass  the  reputation  of  the  dead.  For  the  present  he  spoke  sincerely  of 
Sir  Robert,  declaring  that  his  heart  was  too  full  of  sorrow  to  permit  him  to 
enter  Into  any  analytical  estimate  of  the  loss  which  England  had  sustained. 

The  disappearance  of  Sir  Robert  Peel  from  the  scene  of  his  prolonged 
activities  was  a  critical  circumstance  In  the  political  transformation  that  was 
now  going  forward  with  such  rapidity.  So  long  as  the  leader  lived  the  old 
order  survived.  That  old  order,  however,  was  already  spectral,  and  the  new 
order  was  quickly  revealed.  The  party  known  as  the  Peelites  was  dissolved 
into  its  elements.  It  may  be  allowed  that  William  E.  Gladstone  hardly 
knew  whither  to  go.  He  had  become  a  power  in  Parliament,  and  was 
cherishing  great  ambitions.  He  was  unwilling  to  go  over  to  the  Whigs, 
and  it  had  now  become  impossible  for  him  to  return  to  the  Tories.  For  the 
time  being  he  made  up  to  Sir  James  Graham,  and  stood  close  by  the  side 
of  that   statesman  until  the  death  of  the  latter  in  1861.     Sir  James  at  this 


BEGINNINGS    OF    THE    CHURCH    QUESTION. 


179 


time  enjoyed  a  well-earned  reputation  for  skill  in  politics  and  wisdom  in 
statesmanship.  It  has  been  urged  in  his  behalf  that  if  he  had  possessed  a 
judgment  as  clear  as  his  learning  was  vast  and  his  perceptions  acute  be 
could  but  have  risen  to  distinct  leadership  in  the  public  life  of  Great  Britam. 
It  appears  in  the  r^rospect  that  Gladstone  in  this  stage  of  his  development 
drew  largely  upon  the  resources  of  Sir  James  Graham,  and  to  a  considera- 
ble degree  imbibed  his  principles  and  methods. 


LORD    HENRY    BROUGHAM. 

We  have  in  this  chapter  followed  Mr.  Gladstone  to  that  stage  in  his 
career  where  his  influence,  having  been  first  acknowledged  throughout 
Great  Britain,  began  to  diffuse  itself  over  the  Continent  and  into  all 
countries  having  civilized  relations  with  England,  whether  of  race,  govern- 
ment, or  commercial  intercourse. 


l8o  LIKE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 


CHAPTER  XI. 

First  International  Episode. 

T  is  a  remarkable  circumstance  that  the  first  international  im- 
pression produced  by  William  E.  Gladstone  was  the  result  of 
his  personal  agency,  and  not  of  his  political  or  parliamentary 
offices.  The  event  referred  to  began  with  an  incident  that 
might  be  regarded  as  an  accident.  In  1851  he  brought  him- 
self more  than  ever  to  the  attention  of  Europe  and  the  world  by  two  letters 
which  he  wrote  to  his  friend  George  Hamilton  Gordon,  Earl  of  Aberdeen, 
who  was  soon  to  become  Premier  of  England.  The  source  and  character 
of  the  letters  and  their  influence  on  the  opinion  of  the  day  may  be  under- 
stood from  a  consideration  of  the  following  circumstances  : 

In  1830  Ferdinand  II,  King  of  the  Two  Sicilies,  came  to  the  throne.  He 
was  then  twenty  years  of  age.  He  began  his  reign  with  the  publication  of 
many  specious  promises  of  reform.  He  would  reform  the  finances,  the 
political  conditions,  the  whole  administration  of  the  kingdom.  All  the 
while  he  was  laying  plans  for  the  subversion  of  the  few  remaining  liberties 
of  his  subjects.  He  was  a  shrewd  prince,  poorly  educated,  vain,  and  super- 
stitious. He  had  the  ability  to  hold  the  reins  of  power,  but  he  regarded 
the  people  as  the  mere  materials  of  his  craft. 

Ferdinand  was  indifferent  to  the  wishes  and  sentiments  of  foreign 
countries.  He  took  for  his  first  wife  a  daughter  of  Victor  Emmanuel,  and 
for  his  second  (in  1836)  Maria  Theresa,  daughter  of  Archduke  Charles  of 
Austria.  Henceforth  he  stood  in  with  Austria,  and,  feeling  secure  in  his 
alliance,  adopted  nearly  all  the  methods  of  despotism.  Between  the  years 
1837  ^^^  1848  there  were  no  fewer  than  five  insurrections  against  him. 
That  of  the  last-named  year  was  so  serious,  and  so  greatly  convulsed  Sicily, 
that  the  king  thought  it  better  to  conciliate  the  insurgents.  This  he  did 
by  promising  a  liberal  Constitution.  A  national  election  was  held  and  a 
chamber  of  a  hundred  and  forty  deputies  chosen.  Ferdinand  prescribed  an 
intolerable  oath  for  the  members  of  the  National  Assembly,  and  when  they 
would  not  take  it  he  ordered  the  dissolution  of  the  body. 

This  was  In  March  of  1849.  Tumults  broke  out  in  Naples  and  In 
Sicily.  The  king's  armies  were  ordered  to  suppress  the  insurrection,  and 
this  they  did  by  bombarding  several  cities.  The  innocent  and  the  guilty 
were  visited  with  Indiscriminate  violence.  The  king  got  for  himself  the  title 
of  //  Bomba  I  A  system  of  espionage  and  arbitrary  arrest  was  adopted  ; 
seventy-six  out  of  the  one  hundred  and  forty  deputies  were  seized  and 
thrown  Into  prison.  The  Neapolitan  jails  and  filthy  dungeons  were 
crowded  with  victims.     Public  officers  and  patriots,  Including  a  noble  mem- 


FIRST    INTERNATIONAL    EPISODE. 


181 


ber  of  the  late  ministry,  were  ignominiously  chained  and  thrust  into  prison- 
holes  along  with  the  basest  criminals.  Terror  did  its  perfect  work,  and  for 
the  nonce  King  Ferdinand  flattered  himself  that  he  had  "  restored  order!" 

It  happened  that  Mr.  Gladstone  spent  the  winter  months  of  1850-51  in 
Naples.  It  appeared  that  he  had  no  thought  in  going  thither  of  espousing 
the  cause  of  the  persecuted  Neapolitan  patriots.  He  soon  learned,  on 
inquiry,  that  the  absent  opposition  of  the  Chamber  of  Deputies  was  in 
prison  !  Some  had  fled  to  foreign  parts.  It  was  estimated  that  the  prisons 
held  twenty  thousand,  though  it  was  afterward  ascertained  that  this  estimate 
was  too  great  by  several  thousand.  Mr.  Gladstone  began  to  examine  the 
condition  of  affairs  for  his  own  information.  He  became  at  once  convinced 
of  the  horrid  political  depravity  in  the  government.  Moved  by  humane 
sentiments,  and  pressing  forward  under  the  liberal  impulses  which  had  car- 
ried him  to  his  present  stage  in  the 
public  life  of  England,  he  determined, 
in  his  private  capacity  as  an  English 
citizen,  to  attack  the  monstrous  con- 
dition of  affairs  in  the  kingdom  of 
Naples. 

The  result  was  that  he  composed 
and  sent  to  the  Earl  of  Aberdeen,  as 
said  above,  two  letters,  in  which  he 
described  in  terms  of  dignified  severity 
the  condition  of  things  in  Naples  and 
Sicily.  The  letters  were  at  once  pub- 
lished, and  produced  one  of  the  greatest 
sensations  of  the  day.  The  author  at 
the  outset  declared  that  he  had  not 
visited  Naples  with  the  conscious 
intention  or  design  of  becoming  a  critic  or  censor  with  respect  to  the 
abuses  of  the  government.  He  was  not  there  to  promote  the  opinions  or 
sentiments  of  Great  Britain  ;  but  the  conditions  which  he  had  found  obliged 
him,  from  a  deep  sense  of  duty,  to  denounce  to  his  countrymen  and  the 
world  the  dreadful,  almost  unnamable,  abuses  and  crimes  which  prevailed 
in  the  administration  of  the  Neapolitan  government. 

He  next  pointed  out  the  principal  reasons  which  impelled  him  to  write 
and  publish  his  communications.  In  the  first  place,  the  present  practices 
of  the  government  of  Naples  with  respect  to  political  offenders  he  had 
found  to  be  an  outrage  on  religion,  civilization,  humanity,  and  decency.  In 
the  next  place,  the  practices  of  the  government  in  Naples  were  producing 
by  the  law  of  contraries  a  reign  of  anarchy,  democratic  turbulence,  republi- 
canism, not  accordant  with  the  real  sentiments  of  the  people.     In  the  third 


EARL    OF   ABERDEEN. 


l82  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

place,  the  writer,  being  a  member  of  the  Conservative  party  in  England 
(observe  that  in  1851  Gladstone  still  called  himself  a  Conservative),  must 
unconsciously  sympathize  with  the  established  governments  of  Europe, 
rather  than  with  those  who  assailed  those  governments  ;  and  for  this  reason 
he  must  do  what  he  could  do  to  prevent  the  overthrow  of  the  European 
governments  by  revolts  against  them  on  account  of  their  abusive  characters. 

Mr.  Gladstone  declared  that  he  was  not  passing  judgment  on  the 
administration  of  the  king's  government  as  to  its  imperfections  and  occa- 
sional or  incidental  corruptions  and  cruelties  ;  but  he  attacked  it  because 
of  its  constitutional,  systematic,  and  persistent  outrages  of  all  law  and 
humanity.  He  impeached  the  governnient  of  Ferdinand  because  it  was  in 
contempt  of  the  opi-nions  of  mankind  and  indifferent  to  all  the  humanities. 
He  declared  that  the  violence  done  by  the  king  and  his  minions  was  car- 
ried on  for  the  purpose  of  breaking  ''every  other  law,  unwritten  and  eternal, 
human  and  divine  ;  it  is,"  said  he,  "  the  wholesale  persecution  of  virtue, 
when  united  with  intelligence,  operating  upon  such  a  scale  that  entire, 
classes  may  with  truth  be  said  to  be  its  object,  so  that  the  government  is  in 
bitter  and  cruel,  as  well  as  utterly  illegal,  hostility  to  whatever  in  the  nation 
really  lives  and  moves  and  forms  the  mainspring  of  practical  progress  and 
improvement ;  it  is  the  awful  profanation  of  public  religion,  by  its  notorious 
alliance  in  the  governing  powers  with  the  violation  of  every  moral  rule 
under  the  stimulus  of  fear  and  vengeance  ;  it  is  the  perfect  prostitution  of 
the  judicial  office  which  has  made  it,  under  veils  only  too  threadbare  and 
transparent,  the  degraded  recipient  of  the  vilest  and  clumsiest  forgeries,  got 
up  willfully  and  deliberately,  by  the  immediate  advisers  of  the  crown,  for  tlie 
purpose  of  destroying  the  peace,  the  freedom,  aye,  and  even,  if  not  by  capi- 
tal sentences,  the  life  of  men  among  the  most  virtuous,  upright,  intelligent, 
distinguished,  and  refined  of  the  whole  community  ;  it  is  the  savage  and 
cowardly  system  of  moral,  as  well  as  in  a  lower  degree  of  physical,  torture, 
through  which  the  sentences  obtained  from  the  debased  courts  of  justice  are 
carried  into  effect. 

"The  effect  of  all  this  is  a  total  inversion  of  all  the  moral  and  social 
ideas.  Law,  instead  of  being  respected,  is  odious.  Force,  and  not  affection, 
is  the  foundation  of  government.  There  is  no  association,  but  a  violent 
antagonism,  between  the  idea  of  freedom  and  that  of  order.  The  orovernine 
power,  which  teaches  of  itself  that  it  is  the  image  of  God  upon  earth,  is 
clothed  in  the  view  of  the  overwhelming  majority  of  the  thinking  public 
with  all  the  vices  for  its  attributes.  I  have  seen  and  heard  the  strong  and 
too  true  expression  used,  '  This  is  the  negation  of  God  erected  into  a  system 
of  government.'  " 

We  may  not  here  enter  into  the  discussion  of  the  total  accuracy  of 
the  charges  which  Gladstone  made   against  the  administration  of  the  Two 


FIRST    INTERNATIONAL    EPISODE.      '  1 83 

Sicilies.  It  could  not  well  be  known  how  many,  or  even  exactly  who,  had 
been  seized,  imprisoned,  or  driven  into  exile.  Certain  it  was  in  a  general 
way  that  a  majority  of  the  National  party  in  the  Chamber  of  Deputies,  hun- 
dreds of  leading  patriots,  and  thousands  of  their  followers  had  been  either 
banished  or  imprisoned.  Nor  would  the  government  permit  anyone  to 
ascertain  the  extent  of  the  outrage.  In  course  of  time  it  was  ascertained 
that  the  numbers  given  by  Mr.  Gladstone,  after  his  own  investigations  in 
Naples,  were  somewhat  above  the  mark  ;  but  on  the  other  hand  the  horrors 
of  the  prisons,  the  methods  of  punishment  adopted,  the  cruelty  of  the 
police,  and  the  relentless  indifference  of  the  king  and  all  his  underofficers, 
were  found  to  exceed  not  only  Gladstone's  account  of  the  matter,  but  the 
very  limits  of  human  belief. 

Some  of  the  things  proved  with  respect  to  the  prison  discipline  could 
hardly  be  accepted  as  possible  this  side  of  the  age  of  the  Inquisition.  It 
was  established  as  a  fact  that  the  dungeon-holes  in  which  most  of  the 
prisoners  were  confined  were  so  loathsome  and  pestilential  that  the  physi- 
cians sent  thither  at  intervals  could  not  enter  them.  An  arrangement  was 
made  that  the  sick  or  dying  should  be  brought  forth  to  apartments  that  w^ere 
less  stinking  and  infectious  than  those  in  which  they  were  confined.  There, 
at  the  risk  of  their  lives,  the  doctors  might  administer  to  those  whom  the 
government  really  desired  to  die  as  quickly  as  possible.  In  some  cases  it 
was  proved  that  the  patriots  were  tortured. 

The  superior  criminal  court  of  Naples  at  first,  as  the  story  ran,  was 
divided  about,  evenly  on  the  question  of  trying  justly  those  that  were 
brought  to  that  tribunal.  But  some  of  the  judges  were  the  willing  tools 
of  the  king  and  the  ministry.  They,  assuming  authority,  gave  significant 
hints  to  their  fellow  judges  that  if  the  decisions  were  not  in  accord  with  the 
prevailing  authority  they  who  rendered  such  judgments  might  be  in  the 
same  category  with  the  prisoners.  Those  arrested  were  chained  two  and 
two,  and  were  not  allowed  to  take  off  their  manacles  in  prison.  In  one 
case  a  patriot  w^as  tortured  by  having  a  pointed  instrument  thrust  repeatedly 
under  his  nails.  In  other  cases  the  chains  were  so  heavy  that  the  enfeebled 
prisoners  could  not  stand  up. 

The  patriot  Carlo  Poerio  was  one  of  the  most  eminent  victims  of  these 
indescribable  outrages.  Another  w^as  called  Settembrini.  Another  was 
Signor  Pironte,  who  had  himself  been  a  judge  of  the  court.  A  fourth  was 
the  Baron  Porcari.  It  w^as  manifest  that  it  w^as  the  policy  of  the  govern- 
ment to  extinguish  the  patriots  by  the  method  of  horrid  imprisonment, 
enforced  with  starvation  and  disease.  The  belief  prevailed  that  the  ministers 
and  sovereign  had  not  the  courage  to  execute  even  those  who  were  con- 
demned to  death,  but  chose  rather  by  processes  cowardly  and  inhuman  to  put 
them  into  a  condition  in  which  they  must  perish  as  in  a  chamber  of  horrors. 


184  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM     E.    GLADSTONE. 

The  first  of  Mr.  Gladstone's  letters  was  published  in  April  of  1851,  and 
produced  a  great  sensation  in  England.  This  he  followed  up  with  the 
second  letter  in  July  of  the  same  year.  We  shall  here  present  a  few 
extracts  from  the  latter  communication  as  an  example  of  the  severity  of  the 
arraignment  which  he  made  of  the  Neapolitan  authorities.  The  epistle 
was  written  in  a  tone  as  elevated  as  it  was  severe.  The  writer,  addressing 
the  Earl  of  Aberdeen,  says  : 

"  I  have  felt  it  my  bounden  duty  to  remit  my  statements  by  publication 
to  the  bar  of  general  opinion — of  that  opinion  which  circulates  throughout 
Europe  with  a  facility  and  force  increasing  from  year  to  year,  and  which, 
hoM^ever  in  some  things  it  may  fall  short  or  in  others  exceed  is  so  far,  at 
least,  impregnated  with  the  spirit  of  the  Gospel  that  its  accents  are  ever 
favorable  to  the  diminution  of  human  suffering. 

"  To  have  looked  for  any  modification  whatever  of  the  reactionary 
policy  of  a  government,  in  connection  with  a  moving  cause  so  trivial  as  any 
sentiments  or  experience  of  mine,  may  be  thought  presumptuous  or  chimeri- 
cal. What  claim,  it  may  be  asked,  had  I,  one  among  thousands  of  mere 
travelers,  upon  the  Neapolitan  government }  The  deliberations  which  fix 
the  policy  of  States,  especially  of  absolute  States,  must  be  presumed  to 
have  been  laborious  and  solid  in  some  proportion  to  their  immense,  their 
terrific  power  over  the  practical  destinies  of  mankind ;  and  they  ought  not 
to  be  unsettled  at  a  moment's  notice  in  deference  to  the  wishes  or  the 
impressions  of  insignificant,  or  adversely  prepossessed,  or  at  best  irre- 
sponsible individuals. 

"  My  answer  is  short.  On  the  government  of  Naples  I  had  no  claim 
whatever;  but  as  a  man  I  felt  and  knew  it  to  be  my  duty  to  testify  to  what 
I  had  credibly  heard,  or  personally  seen,  of  the  needless  and  acute  suffer- 
ings of  men.  Yet,  aware  that  such  testimony,  when  once  launched,  is 
liable  to  be  used  for  purposes  neither  intended  nor  desired  by  those  who 
bear  it,  and  that  in  times  of  irritability  and  misgiving,  such  as  these  are  on 
the  continent  of  Europe,  slight  causes  may  occasionally  produce,  or  may 
tend  and  aid  to  produce,  effects  less  inconsiderable,  I  willingly  postponed 
any  public  appeal  until  the  case  should  have  been  seen  in  private  by  those 
whose  conduct  it  principally  touched.  It  has  been  so  seen.  They  have 
made  their  option  ;  and  while  I  reluctantly  accept  the  consequences,  their 
failing  to  meet  it  by  any  practical  improvement  will  never  be  urged  by  me 
as  constituting  an  aggravation  of  their  previous  responsibilities,  .  .  . 

"  My  assurance  of  the  general  truth  of  my  representations  has  been 
heightened,  my  fears  of  any  material  error  in  detail  have  been  diminished, 
since  the  date  of  my  first  letter,  by  the  negative  but  powerful  evidence  of 
the  manner  in  which  they  have  been  met.  Writing  in  July,  I  have  as  yet 
no  qualification  worth  naming  to  append  to  the  allegations  which  I  first  put 


FIRST    INTERNATIONAL    EPISODE.  1 85 

into  shape  in  April.  I  am  indeed  aware  that  my  opinion  with  respect  to 
the  number  of  pohtical  prisoners  in  the  kingdom  of  the  Two  SiciUes  has 
been  met  by  an  assertion  purporting  to  be  founded  on  returns  that  instead 
of  twenty  thousand  they  are  about  two  thousand.  Even  this  number  has 
not  always  been  admitted  ;  for  I  recollect  that  in  November  last  they  were 
stated  to  me,  by  an  Englishman  of  high  honor  and  in  close  communication 
with  the  court,  to  be  less  than  one  thousand.  I  have  carefully  pointed  out 
that  my  statement  is  one  founded  on  opinion;  on  reasonable  opinion  as  I 
think,  but  opinion  still.  Let  the  Neapolitan  government  have  the  full 
benefit  of  the  contradiction  I  have  mentioned.  To  me  it  would  be  a  great 
relief  if  I  could  honestly  say  it  had  at  once  commanded  my  credence.  The 
readers  of  my  letters  will  not  be  surprised  at  my  hesitation  to  admit  it. 
But  t.his  I  would  add  :  the  mere  number  of  political  prisoners  is  in  my 
view,  like  the  state  of  the  prisons,  in  itself,  a  secondary  feature  of  the  case.  If 
they  are  fairly  and  legally  arrested,  fairly  and  legally  treated  before  trial, 
fairly  and  legally  tried,  that  is  the  main  matter.  Where  fairness  and  legality 
preside  over  the  proceedings  we  need  have  no  great  fear  about  an  undue 
number  of  prisoners.  But  my  main  charges  go  to  show  that  there  is  gross 
illegality  and  gross  unfairness  in  the  proceedings;  and  it  is  only  in  connec- 
tion with  the  proof  of  this  that  the  number  of  prisoners  and  the  state  of 
the  prisons  come  to  be  matters  of  such  importance.  .  .  . 

"  I  do  not  intend  to  add  to  the  statements  of  fact  contained  in  my  last 
letter,  though  they  are  but  a  portion,  and  not  always  the  most  striking 
portion  of  those  which  I  might  have  produced.  One  reason  of  this  is  that 
they  are,  as  I  think,  sufficient  for  their  purpose ;  and  another,  that  by  a 
different  course  I  should  probably  put  in  jeopardy,  not  indeed  the  persons 
who  made  them  to  me,  but  those  whom  the  agents  of  the  police  might  sup- 
pose, or  might  find  it  convenient  to  pretend  that  they  supposed,  to  have  so 
made  them.  .  .  . 

"That  my  statements  should  be  received  in  the  first  instance  with 
incredulity  can  cause  me  no  dissatisfaction.  Nay,  more  ;  I  think  that,  for  the 
honor  of  human  nature,  statements  of  such  a  kind  ouoht  to  be  so  received. 
Men  ought  to  be  slow  to  believe  that  such  things  can  happen,  and  happen 
in  a  Christian  country,  the  seat  of  almost  the  oldest  European  civilization. 
They  ought  to  be  disposed  rather  to  set  down  my  assertions  to  fanaticism  or 
folly  on  my  part  than  to  believe  them  as  an  overtrue  tale  of  the  actual  pro- 
ceedings of  a  settled  government.  But  though  they  ought  to  be  thus  dis- 
posed at  the  outset,  they  will  not,  I  trust,  bar  their  minds  to  the  entrance  of 
the  light,  however  painful  be  the  objects  it  may  disclose.  I  have  myself 
felt  that  incredulity,  and  wish  I  could  have  felt  it  still ;  but  it  has  yielded  to 
conviction  step  by  step,  and  with  fresh  pain  at  every  fresh  access  of  evi- 
dence.     I    proceed   accordingly  to  bring   the  reader's  mind,  so   far  as  I  am 


l86  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

able,  under  the  process  through  which  my  own  has  passed,  and  to  state 
some  characteristic  facts,  which  may  convey  more  faithfully  than  abstract 
description  an  idea  of  the  political  atmosphere  of  Italy.  .  .  . 

"  There  was  lately  a  well-known  officer  of  police  in  Milan  named 
Bolza.  In  the  time  of  the  Revolution  of  1848  the  private  notes  of  the 
government  on  the  character  of  its  agents  were  discovered.  Bolza  is  there 
described  as  a  person  harsh,  insincere,  anything  but  respectable,  venal,  a 
fanatical  Napoleonist  until  181 5,  then  an  Austrian  partisan  of  equal  heat, 
'  and  to-morrow  a  Turk,  were  Soliman  to  enter  upon  these  States  ; '  capa- 
ble of  anything  for  money's  sake  against  either  friend  or  foe.  Still,  as  the 
memorandum  continues,  '  he  understands  his  business,  and  is  right  good  at 
it.  Nothing  is  known  of  his  morals  or  of  his  religion.'  But  a  work  pub- 
lished at  Luofano  contains  his  last  will,  and  this  curious  document  testifies 
to  the  acute  sense  which  even  such  a  man  retained  of  his  own  degradation. 
'  I  absolutely  forbid  my  heirs,'  he  says,  '  to  allow  any  mark,  of  whatever 
kind,  to  be  placed  over  the  spot  where  I  shall  be  interred  ;  much  more  any 
inscription  or  epitaph.  I  recommend  my  dearly  beloved  wife  to  impress 
upon  my  children  the  maxim  that,  when  they  shall  be  in  a  condition  to 
solicit  an  employment  from  the  generosity  of  the  government,  they  are  to 
ask  for  it  elsewhere  than  in  the  department  of  the  executive  police  ;  and 
not,  unless  under  extraordinary  circumstances,  to  give  her  consent  to  the 
marriage  of  any  of  my  daughters  with  a  member  of  that  service.' 

"  I  shall  next  name  two  facts  which  are  related  by  Farini,  the  recent 
and  esteemed  writer  of  a  history  of  the  States  of  the  Church  since  1815  : 
*  There  exists  a  confidential  circular  of  Cardinal  Bernetti,  in  which  he  orders 
the  judges,  in  the  case  of  Liberals  charged  with  ordinary  offenses  or  crimes, 
invariably  to  inflict  the  highest  degree  of  punishment.' 

"  Bernetti  was  not  an  Austrian  partisan  ;  it  is  alleged  that  he  was 
supplanted  (early  in  the  reign  of  Gregory  XVI)  through  Austrian  influence. 
His  favorite  idea  was  the  entire  independence  of  the  pontifical  State,  and, 
therefore,  the  circular  to  which  I  have  referred  is  purely  Italian. 

"  This  was  under  Gregory  XVI.  Under  Leo  XII  Cardinal  Rivarola 
went  as  a  legate  a  latere  into  Romagna.  On  the  31st  of  August,  1825,  he 
pronounced  sentence  on  five  hundred  and  eighty  persons.  Seven  of  these 
were  to  suffer  death  ;  forty-nine  were  to  undergo  jiard  labor  for  terms 
varying  between  ten  years  and  life ;  fifty-two  were  to  be  imprisoned  for 
similar  terms.  These  sentences  were  pronounced  privately,  at  the  simple 
will  of  the  cardinal,  upon  mere  presumptions  that  the  parties  belonged  to 
the  liberal  sects,  and,  what  is  to  the  ear  of  an  Englishman  the  most  astound- 
ing fact  of  all,  after  a  process  simply  analogous  to  that  of  a  grand  jury  (I 
compare  the  process,  not  the  person),  and  without  any  opportunity  given  to 
the  accused  for  defense  ! 


FIRST    INTERNATIONAL    EPISODE.  1 87 

"  I  may  add  a  reference  to  an  edict  published  by  the  Duke  of  Modena 
on  the  1 8th  of  April,  1832.  This  edict  ordains  that  political  prisoners 
may  be  sentenced  to  any  punishment  materially  less  than  that  provided 
by  law  upon  proof  of  the  offense  without  any  trial  or  form  of  proceeding- 
whatever,  in  cases  where  it  has  been  agreed  not  to  disclose  the  names  of 
the  witnesses  or  not  to  make  known  the  purport  of  their  evidence.  With 
these  reduced  punishments  exile  was  to  be  ordinarily  combined,  and  fines 
as  well  as  other  appendages  might  be  added  at  discretion  !  The  edict  may 
be  seen  in  the  notorious  newspaper  called  La  Voce  delta  Veri/a,  No.  iio." 

These  blows  of  the  Englishman  went  home,  and  a  sentiment  was 
created  against  the  Neapolitan  government  as  difficult  to  resist  as  though 
there  had  been  a  threatened  invasion.  Such  was  the  effect  that  the  authori- 
ties of  Naples  must  needs  reply  ;  but  their  attempt  to  refute  Gladstone 
and  justify  themselves  was  a  miserable  failure.  The  pamphlet  which 
embodied  the  official  defense  of  Ferdinand  II  was  sent  to  London,  to  the 
government,  with  the  request  that  copies  be  forwarded  to  all  the  European 
courts  to  which  Mr.  Gladstone's  letter  had  gone.  Such  was  the  character, 
however,  of  the  Neapolitan  communication — so  inconsequential  was  the 
argument  and  false  the  spirit  of  the  reply — that  Lord  Palmerston  declined 
to  send  it  anywhere,  saying  that  he  would  not  be  "  accessory  to  the  circu- 
lation of  a  pamphlet  which  in  my  [his]  opinion  does  no  credit  to  its  writer 
or  the  government  which  he  defends  or  to  the  political  party  of  which  he 
professes  to  be  the  champion."  In  a  less  official  manner  he  told  Prince 
Castelcicala,  minister  of  the  Neapolitan  government,  that  he  (Lord  Palmer- 
ston) had  become  convinced  of  the  truthfulness  of  Mr.  Gladstone's  revela- 
tions, and  that  he  hoped  the  government  which  the  prince  represented, 
laying  the  matter  to  heart,  would  hasten  to  reform  the  abuses  which  were 
a  scandal  to  civilization. 

Since  the  reply  of  the  Neapolitan  government  to  Gladstone's  open 
letters  entered  denial  of  his  charges  he  published,  in  the  beginning  of  1852, 
A 71  Examination  of  the  Official  Reply.  He  began  with  this  significant 
quotation  from  "  Richard  III  :  " 

Clarejice. — Relent  and  save  your  souls. 

First  Murderer. — Relent  !   'tis  cowardly,  and  womanish. 

Clarence. — Not  to  relent  is  beastly,  savage,  devilish. 

This  headpiece  was  significant  of  the  severity  with  which  Gladstone 
handled  the  document  which  the  government  of  Naples  had  thundered 
against  him.  He  said  in  the  beginning  that  he  did  not  expect  to  be 
encountered  by  a  responsible  antagonist.  The  answer  to  his  first  two  let- 
ters had  come  from  Naples  under  the  title  of  "  A  Review  of  the  Errors 
and  Misrepresentations  Published  by  Mr.  Gladstone  in  Two  Letters  Directed 
to  the  Earl  of  Aberdeen  ;  "  but  if  the  object  of  a  title,  said  he,  be  to  give  a 


1 88  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

correct  description,  the  Neapolitan  paper  ought  to  have  been  denominated 
"  A  Tacit  Admission  of  the  Accuracy  of  Nine  Tenth  Parts  of  the  State- 
ments Contained  in  the  Two  Letters  to  the  Earl  of  Aberdeen."  The 
author  of  the  denial  had  set  up  as  a  headline  the  Latin  aphorism,  "  To  err, 
to  know  nothing,  to  deceive,  we  consider  both  wicked  an-d  base."  Gladstone 
declared  that  this  motto  was  conspicuously  appropriate  !  The  author  of 
the  denial,  instead  of  arguing  the  truth  or  falsity  of  Gladstone's  contention, 
charged  him  with  levity,  with  ignorance,  with  consorting  with  anarchists 
and  criminals.     To  this  Gladstone  replied  : 

"  But,  indeed,  all  these  charges  of  levity,  of  ignorance,  of  herding  with 
republicans  and  malefactors,  and  the  rest,  are  not  worth  discussing  ;  for  the 
whole  matter  comes  to  one  single  issue — are  the  allegations  true,  or  are 
they  false  .^  If  they  are  false  I  shall  not  be  the  man  to  quarrel  with  any 
severity  of  reproach  that  may  be  directed  against  me  ;  but  if  they  are  true, 
then  I  am  quite  sure  the  Neapolitan  government  will  take  no  benefit  by 
insinuating  doubts  whether  sentiments  like  mine,  even  if  well  founded, 
ought  to  be  made  known,  or  by  taking  any  trivial  and  irrelevant  objection 
to  my  personal  conduct  or  qualifications." 

We  shall  not  here  pursue  the  argumentation  and  refutation  of  Glad- 
stone in  support  of  his  former  letters,  and  to  the  confusion  of  his  adver- 
saries. In  the  meantime  the  matter  had  broken  out  in  Parliament.  At 
the  session  of  1851,  soon  after  the  appearance  of  Gladstone's  first  letter, 
Sir  De  Lacy  Evans  offered  a  paper  in  the  House  of  Commons  to  the 
following  effect : 

"  From  a  publication  entitled  to  the  highest  consideration  it  appears 
that  there  are  at  present  above  twenty  thousand  persons  confined  in  the 
prisons  of  Naples  for  alleged  political  offenses  ;  that  these  prisoners  have, 
with  extremely  few  exceptions,  been  thus  immured  in  violation  of  the 
existing  laws  of  the  country,  and  without  the  slightest  legal  trial  or  public 
inquiry  into  their  respective  cases  ;  that  they  include  a  late  prime  minister 
and  a  majority  of  the  late  Neapolitan  Parliament,  as  well  as  a  large  propor- 
tion of  the  most  respectable  and  intelligent  classes  of  society  ;  that  these 
prisoners  are  chained  two  and  two  together;  that  these  chains  are  never 
undone,  day  or  night,  for  any  purpose  whatever,  and  that  they  are  suffering 
refinements  of  cruelty  and  barbarity  unknown  in  any  other  civilized  country. 
It  is  consequently  asked  if  the  British  minister  at  the  court  of  Naples  has 
been  instructed  to  employ  his  good  offices  in  the  cause  of  humanity  for  the 
diminution  of  these  lamentable  severities,  and  with  what  result }  " 

It  is  one  of  the  rights  and  methods  of  the  British  Parliament  to  put 
questions  of  this  kind,  prefaced  with  explanatory  statements,  to  the  minis- 
ters of  the  crown.  Government  must  answer  the  interrogatories  as  a  rule, 
or,  refusing  to  answer,  subject  themselves  to  further  criticism.     To  interro- 


FIRST    INTERNATIONAL    EPISODE.  189 

gate  is  a  method  of  the  opposition.  The  question  put  in  this  case  to  Lord 
Palmerston  was  embarrassing  ;  for  the  long-standing  policy  of  Great  Britain 
has  been  one  of  noninterference  with  the  political  affairs  of  other  States. 
Great  Britain  under  her  constitution  has  no  right  to  interfere.  Interna- 
tional law,  however,  in  cases  of  extreme  cruelty,  inhumanity,  barbarity,  con- 
cedes the  riofht  of  a  civilized  and  humane  government  to  interfere. 

In  the  case  under  consideration,  moreover,  the  sentiment  of  the  English 
nation  was  overwhelmingly  against  the  Neapolitans.  Lord  Palmerston 
could  only  answer  that  government  had  heard  with  pain  the  confirmation 
of  the  statements  published  by  several  persons  in  a  position  to  know.  Such 
statements  had  been  mutually  established  by  indubitable  testimony. 
Government  had  learned  with  regret  the  calamitous  condition  of  affairs  at 
Naples.  It  was  not  the  part  of  government  to  interfere  formally  with  that 
of  Naples.  The  question,  he  regretted  to  say,  was  one  of  internal  adminis- 
tration, which  Naples  might  determine  for  herself.  Speaking  of  Mr.  Glad- 
stone, he  added,  "  At  the  same  time  Mr.  Gladstone — whom  I  may  freely 
name,  though  not  in  his  capacity  as  a  member  of  Parliament — has  done  him- 
self, I  think,  very  great  honor  by  the  course  he  pursued  at  Naples,  and  by 
the  course  he  has  followed  since  ;  for  I  think  that  when  you  see  an  English 
gentleman,  who  goes  to  pass  a  winter  at  Naples,  instead  of  confining  him- 
self to  those  amusements  that  abound  in  that- city,  instead  of  diving  into 
volcanoes  and  exploring  excavated  cities — when  we  see  him  going  to  courts 
of  justice,  visiting  prisons,  descending  into  dungeons,  and  examining  great 
numbers  of  the  cases  of  unfortunate  victims  of  illegality  and  injustice,  with 
a  view  afterward  to  enlist  public  opinion  in  the  endeavor  to  remedy  those 
abuses — I  think  that  is  a  course  that  does  honor  to  the  person  who  pur- 
sues it  ;  and  concurring  in  feeling  with  him  that  the  influence  of  public 
opinion  in  Europe  might  have  some  useful  effect  in  setting  such  matters 
right,  I  have  thought  it  my  duty  to  send  copies  of  his  pamphlet  to  our 
ministers  at  the  various  courts  of  Europe,  directing  them  to  give  to  each 
government  copies  of  the  pamphlet,  in  the  hope  that,  by  affording  them  an 
opportunity  of  reading  it,  they  might  be  led  to  use  their  influence  in  pro- 
moting what  is  the  object  of  my  honorable  and  gallant  friend — a  remedy  for 
the  evils  to  which  he  has  referred."  This  was  the  highest  possible  testi- 
mony to  the  value  and  efficacy  of  the  revelations  which  Mr.  Gladstone  had 
made. 

The  reference  in  Lord  Palmerston's  reply  to  sending  copies  of  Glad- 
stone's pamphlet  to  the  various  courts  of  Europe  suggests  the  importance 
of  the  subject  and  t'he  far-reaching  influence  which  the  rising  English  states- 
man was  now  able  to  exercise,  not  only  in  his  own  country,  but  also  abroad. 
His  communications  to  the  Earl  of  Aberdeen  produced  animosity  with  a 
certain  class  of  publicists  in  several  parts  of  Europe.     Alleged  answers  to 


IQO 


LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 


his  charges  appeared  in  several  capitals.  Even  in  London  there  was  an  in- 
significant— and  scurrilous — reply.  In  Paris,  M.  Jules  Gondon,  editor  of 
/' 6^w/z'<?r^,  attempted  to  defend  the  government  of  Ferdinand  II.  He  would 
have  that  monarch  to  be  "  the  most  dio-nified  and  the  best  of  kinofs."  In  the 
article  of  Gondon  there  was  an  abundance  of  vituperation,  bigotry,  mere 
outcry  and  rant,  but  hardly  any  attempt  to  discuss  the  facts.  Of  like  charac- 
ter was  another  pamphlet  published  in  Paris  by  Alphonse  Valleydier.  In 
this  production  there  was  much  personal  abuse.  The  writer  seemed  to  think 
that  by  denouncing  Gladstone  he  could  disprove  his  charges — this  being 
indeed  the  universal  and  invariable  method  of  the  flippant  politician  in 
whatever  part  of  the  world.  Like  papers  appeared  in  Turin  and  Naples; 
but  there  was  not  one  of  them  of  sufficient  dignity  to  require  an  answer,  or 
even  permit  it,  with  the  exception  of  the  official  paper  issued  by  the  Neapol- 
itan government. 

Gladstone,  in  his  third  publication,  that  is,  in  An  Examinatio7i  of  the 
Official  Reply,  courageously  and  severely  placed  side  by  side  his  own 
allegations  and  the  admissions,  either  expressed  or  implied,  of  the 
Neapolitan  critic,  and  showed  that  his  own  charges  had  not  been  refuted 
at  all.  He  found  only  five  points  in  the  whole  contention  in  which  he 
had  been  in  error.  He  had  made  a  mistake  relative  to  Settembrini's 
being  tortured.  He  had  also  erred  in  saying  that  that  prisoner  had 
been  put  into  double  irons  for  life.  He  had  made  an  overstatement  in 
regard  to  the  number  of  patriot  judges  who,  at  Reggio,  had  been  driven 
from  office  for  acquitting  some  innocent  political  prisoners  ;  of  the  judges 
so  dismissed  there  were  only  three  instead  of  six,  as  he  had  stated.  He 
admitted  a  fourth  error  respecting  seventeen  sick  prisoners,  who  were 
said  to  have  been  murdered  in  the  jail  of  Procida.  Finally,  he  had  erred 
in  saying  that  certain  prisoners  were  still  confined  in  dungeons,  though 
they  had  been  openly  acquitted  of  the  crimes  for  which  they  had  been 
arrested.  These  prisoners  had  been  liberated  a  short  time  after  their 
acquittal.  Beyond  these  admissions  of  mistake  Gladstone  actually  made 
good  all  that  he  had  published  in  his  first  letters,  and  then  proceeded 
to  intensify  his  charges  with  additional  proofs,  and  added  instances  of 
barbarity  which  in  our  times  would  be  sufficient  to  drive  even  the  Turk 
from  his  throne. 

The  Gladstonian  publications  could  not  really  be  answered  at  all.  The 
government  at  Naples  was  put  under  the  necessity  of  apologizing  for  its 
apology  rather  than  attempting  further  to  confute  what  the  English  states- 
man had  written.  His  appeal  had  been  made  simply  to  the  public  opinion 
of  Europe.  Though  there  had  been  attempted  replies,  the  sentiment  of 
every  enlightened  government  was  against  that  of  King  Ferdinand  to  the 
extent  that  he  must  either  reform  or  suffer  universal  reprobation.    Conclud- 


FIRST    INTERNATIONAL    EPISODE.  IQI 

ing  his  review  of  all  the  facts  and  his  special  answer  to  the  Neapolitan 
official  reply,  Mr.  Gladstone  said  : 

"  And  now  I  have  done  ;  have  uttered,  as  I  hope,  my  closing  word. 
These  pages  have  been  written  without  any  of  those  opportunities  of  per- 
sonal communication  with  Neapolitans  which,  twelve  months  ago,  I  might 
have  enjoyed.  They  have  been  written  in  the  hope  that,  by  thus  making 
through  the  press,  rather  than  in  another  mode,  that  rejoinder  to  the  Nea- 
politan reply  which  was  doubtless  due  from  me,  I  might  still,  as  far  as 
depended  on  me,  keep  the  question  on  its  true  ground,  as  one  not  of  politics, 
but  of  morality,  and  not  of  England,  but  of  Christendom  and  of  mankind. 
Again  I  express  the  hope  that  it  may  not  become  a  hard  necessity  to  keep 
this  controversy  alive  until  it  reaches  its  one  only  possible  issue,  which  no 
power  of  man  can  permanently  intercept.  I  express  the  hope  that  while 
there  is  time,  while  there  is  quiet,  while  dignity  may  yet  be  saved  in  show- 
ing mercy,  and  in  the  blessed  work  of  restoring  Justice  to  her  seat,  the  gov- 
ernment of  Naples  may  set  its  hand  in  earnest  to  the  work  of  real  and 
searching,  however  quiet  and  unostentatious,  reform ;  that  it  may  not 
become  unavoidable  to  reiterate  these  appeals  from  the  hand  of  power  to 
the  one  common  heart  of  mankind  ;  to  produce  those  painful  documents, 
those  harrowing  descriptions,  which  might  be  supplied  in  rank  abundance, 
of  which  I  have  scarcely  given  the  faintest  idea  or  sketch,  and  which,  if 
they  were  laid  from  time  to  time  before  the  world,  would  bear  down  like  a 
deluge  every  effort  at  apology  or  palliation,  and  would  cause  all  that  has 
recently  been  made  known  to  be  forgotten  and  eclipsed  in  deeper  horrors 
yet;  lest  the  strength  of  offended  and  indignant  humanity  should  rise  up  as 
a  giant  refreshed  with  wine,  and,  while  sweeping  away  these  abominations 
from  the  eye  of  heaven,  should  sweep  away  along  with  them  things  pure 
and  honest,  ancient,  venerable,  salutary  to  mankind,  crowned  with  the 
glories  of  the  past,  and  still  capable  of  bearing  future  fruit." 

The  controversy  thus  begun  and  thus  ended,  so  far  as  Gladstone  was 
concerned,  diffused  itself  through  England  and  a  large  part  of  the  Conti- 
nent. The  publications  which  were  made  against  the  government  of  Naples 
were  able  and  based  on  facts  ;  those  in  defense  of  that  government  were 
simply  denunciatory,  and  were  based  on  vague  assertions.  The  only  ques- 
tion remaining  to  be  considered  was  whether  Ferdinand  and  his  ministry 
would  reform  or  whether  they  would  defy  the  civilized  sentiment  of  the 
world. 

For  the  time  being  they  chose  to  defy.  They  coupled  their  unsup- 
ported denials  with  persistency  in  the  wrong  and  a  covert  defense  of  their 
policy.  There  was  no  immediate  relaxation  of  the  barbarism  which  had 
prevailed  in  the  kingdom  of  Naples.  For  several  years  things  went  on  as 
before,  and  the  cries  of  the  imprisoned  patriots  were  swallowed  up  in  silence. 


192  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

Hundreds,  perhaps  thousands,  of  the  incarcerated  died  in  dungeons.  Many 
distinguished  men  thus  perished.  In  some  cases  banishment  was  substi- 
tuted for  death.  One  shipload  of  convicts,  who  should  have  graced  the 
Chamber  of  Deputies,  was  sent  to  America;  but  the  vessel  was  landed  at 
Cork  instead.  The  greater  part  of  the  sixth  decade  went  by,  and  the  day 
of  the  regeneration  of  Italy  under  Mazzini,  Garibaldi,  Cavour,  and  \'ictor 
Emmanuel  dawned  before  the  wretched  victims  of  political  persecution 
reached  the  end  of  their  fate.  The  doctrine  of  noninterference  which  Eng- 
land had  so  long  professed  would  hardly  permit  her  to  take  up  the  cause  of 
the  Neapolitan  patriots  ;  and  by  the  same  reason  other  governments  were 
also  restrained. 

This  condition  dragged  itself  along  until  1856,  when  both  England  and 
France,  becoming  \vearied  at  last  of  holding  diplomatical  intercourse  with 
such  a  government  as  that  of  Francis  II  (who  had  now  succeeded  his 
father  Ferdinand  on  the  throne  of  the  Two  Sicilies),  withdrew  their  repre- 
sentatives from  the  court  of  Naples,  leaving  the  king  and  his  effete  despot- 
ism to  the  sharpening  sword  of  Garibaldi. 

With  the  beginning  of  the  revolution  of  i860  the  Italian  patriots  came 
on  as  an  army  with  banners.  Vainly  did  King  Francis  make  believe  that  he 
would  now  reform  ;  that  he  would  grant  a  new  constitution  ;  that  he  would 
keep  faith  and  behave  affectionately  toward  his  beloved  subjects.  He  could 
not  appease  their  anger  with  overtures  and  sophistical  pledges.  They  knew 
him  too  well — him  and  his  antecedents. 

"The  devil  was  sick,  the  devil  a  monk  would  be  !" 

He  was  treated  accordingly.  His  kingdom  was  absorbed  into  United  Italy. 
William  E.  Gladstone  had  combined  his  energies  and  indionation  with 
the  purposes  of  Count  Cavour  and  the  audacious  patriotism  of  Garibaldi 
to  make  all  Italy  free,  from  the  Alps  to  Sicily. 

The  reader  of  this  work  must  be  surprised  at  the  ceaseless  activities 
which  marked  the  career  of  Gladstone  at  every  stage  of  his  progress.  He 
was  strongr  and  industrious.  In  constitution  he  was  as  robust  as  an  oak. 
Idleness  with  him  was  impossible.  Lord  Palmerston  very  significantly 
referred  to  the  fact  that  Mr.  Gladstone,  instead  of  devoting  himself  to  those 
Neapolitan  amusements  quce  ad  animum  effeminandurn  pertinent,  gave  his 
whole  energies  while  residing  at  Naples  to  the  good  of  his  country  and  the 
welfare  of  mankind.  It  was  while  living  at  that  ancient  city  in  the  winter 
of  1850-51  that  he  undertook  and  completed  the  translation  of  the  first  two 
volumes  of  Luigi  Carlo  Farini's  history,  entitled  The  Roman  State  from 
1 81 5  to  1850.  This  work  came  into  his  hands  while  he  was  making  an 
examination  of  the  progress  of  Italian  events  in  the  first  half  of  our  century. 

Gladstone  was  a  student.  He  found  in  Farini  an  excellent  account  of 
the  ecclesiastical  and  civil  chaos  which  remained  to  the  nineteenth  century 


FIRST    INTERNATIONAL    EPISODE.  1 93 

from  ancient  Rome  and  the  mediaeval  papacy.  Farini,  moreover,  was  one 
of  those  patriotic  men  who  must  needs  be  in  sympathy  with  all  the  friends 
of  progress.  He  knew  and  admired  Gladstone  and  corresponded  with  him, 
and  to  him  dedicated  the  concluding  volume  of  his  history  of  the  Roman 
State.  He  supported  the  English  statesman  in  his  attack  on  the  abuses 
and  despotism  of  the  Neapolitan  government.  He  added  his  own  authority 
to  that  of  Gladstone  in  his  contention  with  the  apologists  for  Ferdinand  H, 
saying  in  one  of  his  communications  relative  to  the  condition  of  affairs  in 
the  kingdom  of  the  Two  Sicilies  :  "  The  scandalous  trials  for  high  treason 
still  continue  at  Naples  ;  accusers,  examiners,  judges,  false  witnesses,  all  are 
bought  ;  the  prisons,  those  tombs  of  the  living,  are  full  ;  two  thousand  citi- 
zens, of  all  ranks  and  conditions,  are  already  condemned  to  the  dungeons, 
as  many  to  confinement,  double  that  number  to  exile — the  majority  guilty 
of  no  crime  but  that  of  having  believed  in  the  oaths  made  by  Ferdi- 
nand H."  It  is  thus  that  history  with  a  burning  pen  writes  everlasting 
contempt  on  the  brazen  forehead  of  every  tyranny  in  the  world. 

Mr.  Gladstone  did  excellent  work  in  his  translation  of  The  Roman  State. 
He  not  only  translated  the  work,  but  reviewed  it  elaborately  in  the  Edin- 
burgh Review  for  April,  1852.  In  the  course  of  this  critique  the  writer 
considers  the  reforming  period  in  the  life  of  Pius  IX  ;  the  diplomacy  of  the 
court  of  Rome  ;  the  powerless  condition  of  the  pope  in  temporal  matters  ; 
the  relations  of  the  civil  and  spiritual  power  ;  the  seeming  impossibilities 
of  making  the  Roman  State  constitutional  ;  ecclesiastical  caste  and  influ- 
ence in  Italy  ;  the  moderation  of  the  Roman  people  ;  the  Italian  insurrec- 
tions and  the  Roman  debt  ;  the  allocution  of  the  holy  father,  of  1848  ;  the 
Constitution  of  the  same  year  ;  the  papacy  in  the  Middle  Ages  ;  a  compari- 
son of  Rome  in  the  years  1809  and  1849  >  the  temporal  sovereignty  of  the 
pope  ;  the  difficulty  of  replacing  it  with  secular  authority  ;  the  extension  of 
the  Italian  question  into  Europe-retc.  In  the  course  of  the  article  he  touched 
upon  nearly  all  of  the  leading  issues  that  were  then  becoming  uppermost 
in  Europe,  and  showed  his  ability  to  handle  the  largest  interests  in  a  states- 
manlike manner.     In  one  paragraph  he  proceeds  thus  : 

"  I.  Can  the  temporal  government  of  the  popes  accommodate  itself  to 
constitutional  forms  ? 

"  2.   If  not,  can  it  or  ought  it  to  endure  .? 

"3.  If  not,  then  in  what  manner  should  the  political  void  be  filled  and 
the  see  of  Rome  provided  for  with  a  view  to  the  interests  of  the  Roman 
subjects,  the  disappointment  of  the  revolutionary  speculations  in  Italy  or 
elsewhere,  and  the  just  claims  of  the  see  itself  as  the  ecclesiastical  center  of 
the  largest  among  Christian  communions  }  " 

The  reader  need  not  be  told  of  the  overwhelming  importance  of  such 
questions  as  those  here  presented.     At  the  middle  of  the  century  they  were 
13 


194  i-IFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

paramount  to  almost  ever)-  other  question  whatsoever.  How  far-reachino^ 
were  his  views  might  be  seeMi  in  the  paragraph  touching  the  proposition 
that  the  affairs  of  Italy  were  national  rather  than  international — that  they 
related  to  herself  and  not  to  other  States.     On  this  subject  he  says  : 

"  Let  us  now  examine  the  assertion  that  the  settlement  of  Roman 
affairs  is  the  concern  solely  of  the  Roman  Catholic  powers.  In  1849  ^^^^ 
meaning  of  this  doctrine  was  that  the  decision  should  lie  with  France  and 
Austria,  Spain  and  Naples,  Now  it  should  be  considered  who  are  excluded 
and  who  are  included  by  this  principle.  It  excludes  at  a  stroke  three  of 
the  five  great  powers  of  Europe — England,  Russia,  and  Prussia  ;  of  those 
powers  by  whom,  and  by  whom  alone,  European  questions,  properly  so 
called,  have  of  late  years  usually  been  weighed.  It  includes,  on  the  other 
hand,  Spain  and  Naples,  neither  of  which  can  without  qualification  be  called 
even  independent  powers  ;  the  latter  of  them  vibrating,  not  only  to  every 
shock,  but  to  every  rumor,  to  every  whisper  of  change,  in  whatever  part  of 
Europe,  at  the  beck  of  /\ustrian  and  Russian  influence  even  for  the  pur- 
poses of  internal  government,  and  depending  on  their  armed  strength  in  the 
last  resort  for  the  maintenance  of  what  must  be  called,  however  abusively, 
her  institutions.  England,  Russia,  Prussia  shut  out  ;  Spain  and  Naples 
taken  in  :  the  first  is  foolish,  the  latter  ludicrous.  States  never  dreamt  of 
in  the  settlement  of  ordinary  European  questions  have  but  a  feeble  claim, 
indeed,  to  intermeddle  with  that  which  is  the  most  delicate  and  difficult  of 
them  all,  requiring  at  once  the  finest  finger  and  the  strongest  arm.  But  if 
Naples  and  Spain  are  thus  to  interfere,  where  are  Belgium  and  Sardinia  ? 
Do  not,  at  any  rate,  allow  the  Roman  question  to  become  the  game  of  those 
whose  only  title,  as  compared  with  others,  to  a  share  in  it  must  be  the  wish 
to  intermeddle,  to  intrigue,  to  promote  covert  purposes,  under  the  mask  of 
such  as  can  more  easily  be  avowed.  If  Belgium  and  Sardinia  be  inferior 
in  population  to  Spain  and  Naples  they  are  not  so  much  inferior  in 
strength,  as  they  are  certainly  superior  in  intelligence  and  independence." 

Mr.  Gladstone  was  himself  aware  of  the  breadth  and  outreaching 
antenncE  of  the  questions  which  he  was  considering.  He  saw  clearly  enough 
that  on  the  civil  as  well  as  the  ecclesiastical  side  the  general  disturbance 
in  Italy  might  be  felt  with  more  or  less  distinctness  to  the  outposts  of  the 
civilized  world.  In  the  conclusion  of  his  article  in  the  Ediiiburo-Ji  Revieiv 
he  says : 

"  We  have  thus  endeavored,  with  great  rapidity,  to  traverse  or  skim  an 
almost  boundless  field.  Many  of  its  tracks  which  we  have  barely  touched, 
such  as  the  details  of  the  Pian  reforms,  the  policy  of  France»in  1849,  ^^^ 
actual  condition  of  the  Roman  States,  and  the  enormous  difficulties  in 
which  the  friends  of  the  popular  cause  in  Ital)-  entangle  themselves  by 
their  views  of  the   question   of  national   independence,  demand  and  would 


FIRST    INTERNATIONAL    EPISODE.  I95 

well  repay  the  pains  of  a  separate  discussion.  But  we  must  close  with  a 
recommendation  to  the  reader  to  avail  himself  of  the  lights  thrown  upon 
Italian  history  and  politics  by  the  recent  literature  of  the  country.  We  do 
not  refer  only  to  well-known  names,  such  as  those  of  Balbo,  Gioberti,  and 
D'Azeglio,  but  to  some  yet  more  recent  works.  Gualterio  is  of  the  Consti- 
tutional party,  like  Farini  ;  his  work  abounds  in  valuable  documents,  and  is, 
we  believe,  trustworthy,  but  it  is  too  bulky  for  our  common  literature. 
Farini  is  admirable,  both  for  general  ability  and  moral  tone  and  for  the 
indulgent  fairness  with  which  he  states  the  case  of  the  popedom  and  the 
pope.  In  other  matters,  especially,  for  instance,  when  he  deals  with  the 
more  advanced  shades  of  liberalism,  he  can  lay  about  him  with  considerable 
vigor  ;  but,  upon  the  whole,  we  believe  that  his  history  has  quite  enough 
of  the  judicial  tone  to  secure  to  it  the  place  of  a  high  permanent  authority 
in  Italian  questions.  The  Mcmorze  Storiche  of  Torre  are  the  production  of 
a  writer  about  halfway  between  Farini  and  Mazzini  in  opinion.  They  are 
written  with  a  lively  clearness  and  with  every  appearance  of  sincere  inten- 
tion ;  they  likewise  contain  important  military  details.  Ricciardi's  Histoire 
de  la  Revolution  cT Italic  en  1848  is  the  production  of  an  intelligent,  straight- 
forward, and  thoroughgoing  Republican,  and  may  be  consulted  with  advan- 
tage in  order  to  obtain  the  prospect  of  the  whole  subject  from  his  point  of 
view.  As  a  Neapolitan  he  deals  most  copiously  with  that  portion  of  the 
case  which  is  well  handled,  in  the  constitutional  sense,  by  Massari,  in  the 
Casi  di  Napoli.  As  to  the  literature  of  the  late  struggle  on  the  reactionary 
side  we  know  not  where  to  look  for  it.  The  Ultimi  69  Giorni  delta 
Repttblica  in  Romania  has  absolutely  nothing  but  extravagant  party  spirit 
to  recommend  it.  But  all  genuine  historical  memoirs  of  Roman  affairs  well 
deserve  a  peculiar  attention  from  English  readers,  for  their  importance 
extends  far  beyond  the  range  of  mere  local  interest ;  they  belong  to  a 
chapter  of  human  history  only  now  beginning  to  be  opened,  but  full  of 
results  of  deep  and  as  yet  uncertain  moment  to  every  country  in  Chris- 
tendom." 

Here,  then,  at  the  conclusion  of  what  may  well  be  denominated  the 
first  international  episode  in  the  career  of  Gladstone,  we  make  a  pause  in 
following  this  aspect  of  his  activity  and  purpose,  and  return  to  the  consid- 
eration of  his  parliamentary  life  in  England. 


ig6  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

CHAPTER  XII. 
Durham  Letter  and  Ecclesiastical  Titles  Bill. 


Y  the  middle  of  the  century  William  E.  Gladstone  had  become, 
politically  speaking,  no  man's  man.  For  this  there  were  sev- 
eral reasons.  Some  of  these  were  found  in  himself;  others,  in 
his  conditions.  His  progress  was  reaching  from  conservatism 
to  liberalism — and  had  almost  arrived.  The  intermediate 
stages  might  be  defined,  first,  as  liberal  conservatism,  and  then  as  conserva- 
tive liberalism.  He  had  been  lately  a  sincere  and  thoroughgoing  Peelite. 
After  the  death  of  Sir  Robert,  parliamentarians  of  this  following  wot  not  for 
a  season  what  to  do  with  themselves.  Meanwhile,  the  whole  landscape  of 
British  politics  was  suffering  transformation.  We  will  follow  here  at  least 
one  of  the  lines  of  change. 

Pius  IX,  from  being  the  most  liberal,  had  become  one  of  the  most  con- 
servative, as  well  as  one  of  the  most  ambitious,  of  the  popes.  He  aimed  at 
nothing  less  than  the  extension  and  restoration  of  the  ecclesiastical  suprem- 
acy of  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  throughout  the  world,  and  the  reestab- 
lishment  of  the  temporal  dominion  of  the  see  of  Rome  in  all  Christian 
nations.  More  and  more  he  avowed  this  policy,  set  it  forth  in  his  public 
papers,  and  enforced  it  practically  as  far  as  he  could.  In  doing  so  he  must 
needs  encounter  the  greatest  obstacles.  Such  obstacles  would  be  found  in 
the  most  powerful  Protestant  nation — and  that  was  England. 

One  specification  in  the  pope's  policy  was  the  making  of  favor  for 
Rome  by  enlarging  the  hierarchy  in  every  country  where  he  might.  This 
he  did  in  Great  Britain.  In  the  fifth  decade  the  Roman  priesthood  in  Eng- 
land was  greatly  honored,  elevated,  and  confirmed.  Whig  statesmanship, 
strongly  devoted  to  the  Church  of  England,  awoke  to  find  itself  actually 
endangered  b}'  the  aggressions  of  Rome.  More  and  more  the  ancient 
hierarchy  arose,  and  more  and  more  the  ritual  and  usages  of  the  Catholic 
Church  prevailed.  These  influences  extended  into  the  Episcopal  Establish- 
ment ;  for  the  ceremonial  of  Rome  is  more  glorious  than  that  of  the  Church 
of  England. 

At  length  there  was  a  reaction  against  the  Romanizing  process.  In 
1850,  just  about  the  time  that  Gladstone  went  abroad  for  temporary  resi- 
dence in  Naples,  Lord  John  Russell,  Premier  of  England,  wrote  a  letter  to 
the  Bishop  of  Durham,  deprecating,  and  indeed  strongly  denouncing,  the 
recent  honors  conferred  by  Rome  on  her  hierarchy  in  England  and  Wales. 
The  communication  was  a  Church  of  England  letter  throuo-h  and  throuofh, 
radical,  aggressive,  pointed.  Its  publication  produced  a  deep  impression, 
and  led  immediately  to  heated    controversy.     The  document    passed    into 


DURHAM    LETTER    AND    ECCLESIASTICAL    TITLES    BILL.  I97 

history  under  the  name  of  "  The  Durham  Letter."  It  was  followed  with 
political  consequences  of  the  greatest  significance. 

By  the  time  of  Gladstone's  return  from  Italy,  and  before  the  completion 
of  his  contention  about  the  Neapolitan  prisons,  the  ministry  of  Lord  John 
Russell  staggered  and  fell  across  the  battered  ramparts.  His  ascendency  as 
premier  and  first  lord  of  the  treasury  extended  from  1846  to  1852.  The 
trouble  in  Parliament  which  nearly  preceded  his  overthrow  related  almost 
wholly  to  his  effort  in  opposing  the  aggressive  policy  of  Rome  in  England. 
Parliament  and  the  Enorlish  nation  had  become  alarmed  over  the  oreat 
gains  and  threatened  ascendency  of  the  Mother  Church. 

Lord  Russell,  at  the  session  of  185  i,  introduced  into  the  House  of  Com- 
mons a  bill  to  counteract  the  influence  and  manifest  purposes  of  the  papacy. 
The  bill  was  the  essence,  so  to  speak,  and  logical  deduction  of  the  Durham 
letter.  The  measure  proposed  struck  a  popular  chord ;  only  a  few  members 
of  Parliament  dared  to  vote  against  it.  For  the  moment  it  seemed  that  the 
Russell  ministry  was  riding  the  highest  wave.  But  while  government 
seemed  in  its  ecclesiastical  policy  to  have  all  England  at  its  back,  in  the 
secular  concern  it  suddenly  lost  favor  and  began  to  disintegrate. 

Unfortunately  for  the  Whigs,  they  were  held  responsible  for  the  agri- 
cultural distress  which  continued  in  a  large  part  of  the  kingdom.  The  old 
Tory  aristocracy  was  reinforced  by  the  hardships  which  had  fallen  on  the 
farmers.  They  claimed  that  the  distress  of  the  country  outside  of  the  man- 
ufacturing and  commercial  centers  was  increasing  to  the  extent  that  the 
hardy  yeomanry  of  England  was  threatened  with  pauperism.  The  govern- 
ment was  able  to  defend  itself  in  part  against  these  assertions.  Statistics 
were  adduced  to  show  that  since  the  adoption  of  free  trade  pauperism  had 
diminished.  Even  in  Ireland  the  poor — the  starving  poor — were  not  so 
numerous  as  they  had  been  before  the  abolition  of  the  Corn  Laws. 

It  was  also  shown  that  the  revenues  had  increased.  The  shipping  and 
commercial  interest  had  been  built  up.  Manufactures  flourished.  Never- 
theless, the  sore  spot  was  only  filmed  over  with  these  plausibilities.  At 
bottom  the  fact  remained  that  the  farmers  were  suffering  and  impoverished. 
As  has  been  recently  the  case  in  America,  the  agricultural  interest  was  dis- 
tanced in  the  race  for  sufficiency  and  content.  Perhaps  the  farmers  were 
not  much  worse  off  than  they  had  been  before,  but  relatively  they  were 
greatly  disparaged. 

The  situation  afforded  opportunity  in  Parliament  for  an  attack  by  the 
opposition.  Who  should  lead  the  assault  but  the  brilliant  and  spectacular 
Disraeli  }  No  man  was  readier  than  he  to  discover  an  opportunity.  He 
rose  to  greatness  in  the  political  history  of  England  and  of  Europe  by  dis- 
covering opportunities  that  were  about  to  be  undiscovered  by  others.  Here 
was  a  case  in  which  the  landed  interests  of  Great   Britain  had  suffered  for 


198  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

the  promotion  of  manufactures.  The  prevailing  system  of  taxation  was  cor- 
respondingly unequal.  The  resolution  which  Mr.  Disraeli  offered  was  to 
the  effect  that  the  government  should  at  once  bring  forward  a  bill  to  relieve 
the  distresses  of  the  English  nation. 

In  his  speech  he  alleged  that  such  distresses  were  increasing  from  day 
to  day,  and  that  pauperism  was  impending  over  the  English  peasantry.  The 
government  could  hardly  make  an  issue  with  him  on  the  first  proposition, 
namely,  the  prevalent  distress  ;  but  on  all  other  points  the  ministers  were 
able  to  reply  with  at  least  a  show  of  plausibility.  They  denied  that  the 
hardships  of  the  agricultural  classes  were  greater  than  hitherto.  They 
pointed  to  the  fact  that  the  revenues  of  Great  Britain  had  risen  to  seventy 
millions  annually.  They  were  able  to  show  that  British  commerce  was 
never  before  at  so  high  a  stage  of  development.  They  were  also  able  to 
assume  the  aggressive,  and  to  show  that  Disraeli's  motion,  stripped  of  all 
disguises,  meant  a  renunciation  of  the  free-trade  policy  of  1846,  and  a  return 
to  the  abandoneci  system  of  the  age  of  the  Georges. 

This  defense  by  the  government  was  sufficiently  plausible ;  but  the 
country  had  already  grown  restless  of  the  Russell  ministry.  Disraeli's  motion 
was  voted  clown  by  a  very  small  majority  in  a  full  House.  A  few  days 
afterward  a  ministerial  motion  to  conform  the  franchise  of  the  counties  to 
that  of  the  boroughs  was  actually  lost,  though  this  was  not  decisive. 

In  the  next  place,  on  the  introduction  of  the  budget  for  1852,  the  House 
and  the  country  were  alarmed  and  angered  to  note  the  retention  of  the 
income  tax.  That  expedient,  when  it  was  adopted,  had  been  accepted  as 
temporary.  Now  government  asked  that  it  be  continued  for  another 
period  of  three  years.  As  if  to  alleviate  this  unwholesome  feature  it  was 
proposed  to  remit  in  part  the  tax  on  windows.  There  were  also  incorporated 
some  features  calculated  to  please  and  benefit  the  farmers. 

So  hardly  was  the  ministry  now  pressed  that  the  budget  could  not  be 
carried.  It  was  modified  in  many  particulars,  and  another  finally  proposed 
instead.  In  the  latter  the  aid  promised  to  the  farmers  was  omitted  and  the 
tax  on  windows  retained.  The  income  tax  was  also  included  for  three  years 
longer.  Even  in  this  modified  form  the  chancellor  of  the  exchequer  had  the 
greatest  difficulty  in  securing  the  adoption  of  his  scheme.  Time  and  again 
in  the  course  of  the  debates  he  was  met  with  adverse  votes  on  exceptionable 
features  of  the  budget.  The  pressure  became  so  extreme  that  Lord  John 
Russell  was  obliged  to  resign.  Lord  Stanley  was  summoned  b)^  the  queen, 
and  that  statesman  made  an  attempt  to  organize  a  new  government,  but 
failed. 

Then  the  Earl  of  Aberdeen  was  called  ;  but  he  had  offended  the  faction 
of  Sir  Robert  Peel.  The  followers  of  Sir  Robert  were  known  for  their 
friendliness  to  the   Roman   Catholics.     They  could  hardly  be  charged  with 


I 


DURHAM    LETTER    AND    ECCLESIASTICAL    TITLES    BILL.  I99 

prejudice  in  favor  of  Catholicism  itself;  but  they  were  more  tolerant  of  the 
Catholics  than  any  other  party.  The  Earl  of  Aberdeen  was  a  strenuous 
Protestant,  and  quite  uncompromising  in  his  hostility  to  the  Romanists.  For 
this  reason  the  Peelites  would  not  support  him,  and  he  was  obliged  to  give 
up  his  unsuccessful  effort  to  form  a  ministry.  Indeed,  he  saw  the  impos- 
sibility of  doing  so,  and  declined  the  queen's  call.  These  movements  were 
favorable  to  Lord  John  Russell,  and  he  reoccupied  his  place  as  premier.  He 
at  once  resumed  the  suspended  measures  of  his  late  ministry.  One  of  these 
was  the  bill  forbidding  the  granting  by  foreign  authority  of  ecclesiastical 
titles  in  England.  It  was  found  impracticable  to  carry  out  the  measure  in 
such  form  as  had  been  foreshadowed  in  the  Durham  letter.  Many  amend- 
ments were  offered  and  adopted,  until  the  bill  became  so  particolored  and 
inane  that  it  was  almost  as  repugnant  to  one  party  as  the  other. 

Many  of  the  ablest  men  in  the  British  Parliament  set  themselves  against 
the  Ecclesiastical  Titles  Bill  in  sternest  opposition.  In  general,  the  Peelites, 
or  Independent  party,  opposed  the  measure  in  toto.  Mr.  Gladstone  was  of 
this  number.  Speaking  in  the  debate  on  the  second  reading,  he  made  a  long 
and  able  and  liberal  speech.  In  beginning  he  struck  down  to  the  root  of  all 
such  questions  with  the  allegation  that  the  Constitution  of  England  and  the 
whole  frame  of  her  civilization  were  so  firmly  established  and  thorough  in 
development  as  to  throw  off  and  reject  whatever  was  hostile  thereto.  No 
foreign  power  or  interruption  of  the  kind  complained  of  in  the  Ecclesiastical 
Titles  Bill  could  successfully  enter  in  and  confuse  the  institutions  of  England. 

The  whole  question,  he  further  said,  looked  to  the  regulation  of  spirit- 
ualities by  law.  It  was  the  true  province  of  law  to  deal  with  temporalities. 
An  act  of  Parliament  made  in  defense  of  the  Church  of  England — an  act 
such  as  that  proposed — must  necessari-ly  end  in  failure  and  confusion.  No 
doubt  the  See  of  Rome  had  interfered  with  the  affairs  of  England;  but  they 
were  not  her  temporal  affairs.  It  was  the  religious  affairs  of  England  that 
had  been  disturbed  by  the  aggressive  policy  of  the  papacy.  If  the  Catholic 
power  had  attempted  to  touch  the  secular  concerns  of  Great  Britain,  there 
could  be  and  would  be  but  one  voice  among  Englishmen  as  to  the  remedy- 
In  such  a  case  Parliament  ought  to  act  speedily  and  decisively  against  the 
interference.  Considering  the  nature  of  the  thing  done  by  Rome  in  Eng- 
land, there  was  really  no  right  of  an  action  against  her. 

The  speaker  readily  agreed  that  the  tone  and  sentiments  of  the  late 
utterances  of  the  Vatican  directed  to  the  Catholic  leaders  in  England  were 
arrogant,  mediaeval,  and  impudent ;  but  these  utterances  and  pronuncia- 
mentos  had  not  sprung  from  the  Roman  Catholic  citizens  of  Great  Britain. 
Such  citizens  could  not  be  held  responsible  for  the  misjudgment  and  insult- 
ing spirit  of  the  papacy.  The  pope  must  be  acknowledged  as  the  spiritual 
head  of  Catholic  Christendom  ;  but  his  ecclesiastical  subjects  in  various  coun- 


200  LIP'E    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

tries  could  not  be  logically  punished  for  the  sins  of  the  Vatican.  It  must  be 
shown  that  there  was  temporal  interference  as  well  as  spiritual  before  the 
Parliament  would  be  called  to  act  in  the  manner  indicated  in  the  pending 
measure. 

Moreover,  there  was  a  line  of  policy,  as  well  as  a  line  of  principle,  that 
ought  to  be  followed  in  this  question.  There  were  parties  in  the  Roman 
communion.  There  was  a  moderate  party  of  Catholics,  including  the  greater 
number  of  the  secular  clergy.  The  laity  must  be  considered.  This  mod- 
erate party  had  been  contending  for  a  long  time  that  diocesan  bishops 
should  be  appointed.  Against  this  the  high  party  of  the  Vatican,  including 
the  cardinals,  had  argued  and  thundered.  If  Parliament  should  pass  the 
Ecclesiastical  Titles  Bill  then  the  moderate  Catholics,  the  secular  clergy,  and 
the  laity  at  large  would  be  forced  out  of  accord  with  a  principle  which  was 
not  repugnant  to  the  Church  of  England  in  her  methods  of  appointment. 
All  such  moderates  would  be  driven  to  covert  under  the  eaves  of  Rome. 
He  was  aware  that  the  principle  which  he  advocated  and  the  practice  which 
he  proposed  were  unpopular  for  the  time  ;  but  the  cause  for  which  he  con- 
tended was  a  true  cause,  and  would  ultimately  prevail. 

The  event  showed  that  Mr.  Gladstone  rightly  estimated  the  popular 
prejudice.  It  was  in  vain  at  that  time  to  try  to  stem  the  overwhelming  sen- 
timent against  the  impudence  and  pretensions  of  the  Roman  see.  The  Peel- 
ites,  following  Gladstone  and  Sir  James  Graham  in  the  debate,  were  able  to 
muster  only  ninety-five  votes  in  a  full  House.  They  might  console  them- 
selves with  numberinof  on  their  side  some  of  the  ablest  and  most  liberal  men 
in  England;  but  the  popular  prejudice,  like  a  vast  sheet  of  plastering  over- 
head, loosed  itself  and  fell  upon  them  with  noise  and  dust  and  smothering 
confusion  sufficient  to  break  down  and  bury  any  but  the  strongest.  In  such 
cataclysms,  however,  the  strongest  allow  the  falling  mass  to  break  itself  over 
their  heads  and  shoulders;  but  they  stand  sublimely  up. 

Lord  John  Russell  might  succeed  with  his  Ecclesiastical  Titles  Bill  ;  for 
he  had  three  centuries  of  overwhelming  prejudice  at  his  back.  But  on  all 
other  questions  he  waned  and  receded.  Already,  near  the  close  of  the  year 
before.  Lord  Palmerston,  whose  will  and  personality  were  so  strong  as  to 
forbid  his  accord  with  those  who  were  not  his  equals,  was  driven  from  his 
office  of  secretary  of  foreign  affairs.  As  a  matter  of  fact  the  ministry  was 
justified  in  proceeding  against  him.  He  would  not  obey  the  wishes  of  the 
government  of  which  he  constituted  so  great  a  part. 

The  reader  will  bear  in  mind  that  just  at  this  juncture  the  great  coup 
detat  of  Louis  Napoleon  Bonaparte  was  preparing  itself  silently  but 
powerfully  in  Paris.  Great  Britain  was  on  record  with  a  pledge  never  to 
acknowledge  any  Bonaparte  on  the  throne  of  Europe.  The  whole  family 
was  under  her  official   and  recorded  ban.      But  circumstances  had  changed 


DURHAM    LETTER    AND    ECCLESIASTICAL    TITLES    BILL. 


20 1 


greatly  since  1815.  True,  the  Duke  of  Wellington  yet  lived;  but  he  was 
in  the  last  year  of  his  life.  The  British  cabinet  met  on  the  occasion  of  the 
coup  detat  and  passed  a  reso- 
lution to  refrain  for  the  present 
from  all  comments  respecting 
the  thing  done  in  France.  The 
government  of  Great  Britain 
would  not  express  either  ap- 
proval or  disapproval  of  the 
event.  It  was  wise  to  wait -and 
see.  Therefore  the  ministers 
resolved  to  remain  silent — at 
least  until  the  thinof  done  in 
Paris  by  revolution  should 
further  declare  itself 

But  not  so  Lord  Palmer- 
ston.  Not  only  in  private  con- 
versations, but  in  his  foreign 
correspondence  as  well,  he 
spoke  with  approval  of  Prince 
Louis  Napoleon  and  of  the 
methods  which  he  was  employ- 
ing to  confirm  his  government  in  France.  This  business  was  quite  intoler- 
able to  the  ministry,  and  Lord  Palmerston  was  dismissed.  In  a  few  months, 
however,  he  made  all  things  even  by  defeating  the  government  on  an 
amendment  of  his  own  offered  to  the  Militia  Bill  of  1852.  Ministers  chose 
to  regard  this  defeat  as  decisive,  and  Lord  John  Russell  resigned.  The 
queen  hereupon  summoned  Lord  Derby  to  form  a  new  ministry.  That 
statesman  proceeded  to  do  so,  and  offered  an  important  place  to  Mr. 
Gladstone  ;  but  the  latter  would  not  accept.  The  failure  of  the  Peelites  to 
go  heartily  with  Lord  Derby  soon  left  him  in  a  minority,  and  the  govern- 
ment was  again  dissolved.  Only  unimportant  measures  could  be  passed 
during  the  spring  and  summer  session  of  1852. 

The  historians  of  this  year  are  justified  in  not  passing  over  to  the  re- 
newal of  parliamentary  disputes  at  the  ensuing  session  without  noting  the 
death  of  the  greatest  remaining  hero  of  Great  Britain.  The  Duke  of 
Wellington,  revered  and  beloved  by  the  British  nation,  passed  away  on  the 
14th  of  September,  1852.  That  nation  carried  him  with  loud  outcry  and 
show  of  grief  to  his  last  resting  place  by  the  side  of  Lord  Nelson,  under  the 
dome  of  St.  Paul's.  It  was  the  greatest  pageant  thus  far  witnessed  in  the 
whole  history  of  British  sepulture.  The  hero  was  about  three  months  older 
than   Napoleon,  the  date  of  his  birth  not  being  precisely  known.     But  the 


LOUIS   NAPOLEON. 


>o: 


iAFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIA.M     E.    GLADSTONE. 


events  of  his  life  will  be  known  forever.  England  might  well  bury  with 
loudest  acclaim  of  sorrow  that  resolute  and  iron  form  that  had  withstood 
the  tempests  of  the  Peninsular  Wm'  and  had  remained  upright  and  glorious 
on  the  heights  of  Mont  St.  Jean,  looking  tranquilly  toward  Hougoment  and 
La  Haie  Sainte  through  the  uproar  and  cataclysm  of  Europe.  Well  might 
the  laureate  celebrate  his  final  passage  from  the  activities  of  life : 

"  Bury  the  great  duke 

With  an  empire's  lamentalion, 
Let  us  bury  the  great  duke 

To  the  noise  of  the  mourning  of  a  mighty  nation, 
Mourning  when  their  leaders  fall, 
Warriors  carry  the  warrior's  ]rM, 
And  sorrow  darkens  hamlet  and  hall. 


"Where  shall  we  lay  the  man  whom  we  deplore? 
Here,  in  streaming  London's  central  roar. 
Let  the  sound  of  those  he  wrought  for 
And  the  feet  of  those  he  fought  for 
Echo  round  his  bones  for  evermore. 

"Lead  out  the  pageant :  sad  and  slow, 

As  fits  an  universal  woe, 

Let  the  long,  long  procession  go. 

And  let  the  sorrowing  crowd  about  it  grow, 

And  let  the  mournful  martial  music  blow  ; 

The  last  great  Englishman  is  low." 

Among  the  parliamentary  eulogists  on  this  great  occasion  Gladstone 
held  a  conspicuous  place.  Before  his  address,  however,  his  present  and 
future  competitor,  Disraeli,  had  spoken  on  the  duke's  death,  and  had  made 
perhaps  the  most  unfortunate  break  in  his  whole  public  career.  It  chanced 
that  some  years  previously,  namely,  in  1829,  on  the  occasion  of  the  funeral  of 
Marshal  Gouvion  St.  Cyr,  M.  Adolphe  Thiers,  destined  to  be  President  of 
the  Third  Republic,  had  delivered  an  oration  of  striking  character.  On  the 
1st  of  July,  1848,  the  Mor?iing  Chronicle  newspaper  of  London,  in  an  article, 
incidentally  quoted  a  considerable  section  from  Thiers's  eulogy.  It  was  sub- 
sequently shown  that  Disraeli  had  himself  called  the  attention  of  the  editor 
of  the  Chronicle  to  the  eloquent  paragraph  in  French.  In  the  course  of 
his  oration  he  had  the  unhappiness,  either  intentionally  or  unintentionall^^ 
of  falling  into  the  exact  language  of  the  oration  of  Thiers,  and  of  following 
it  so  far  as  to  constitute  a  flagrant  plagiarism. 

The  public  was  astounded,  and  claimed  to  be  scandalized  that  the 
leader  of  the  House  of  Commons  should  do  a  thing  so  much  beneath  the 
dignity  of  manhood,  to  say  nothing  of  statesmanship  and  literary  honor. 
The    Globe  newspaper   said    of    it,  with  burning  sarcasm  :  "  The   Duke  of 


DURHAM    LETTER    AND    ECCLESIASTICAL    TITLES    BILL. 


20' 


Wellington  has  experienced  the  vicissitudes  of  either  fortune,  and  his  calam- 
ities were  occasionally  less  conspicuous  than  the  homage  which  he  ulti- 
mately secured.  He  was  pelted  by  a  mob.  He  braved  the  dagger  of 
Cantillon.  The  wretched  Capefigue  even  accused  him  of  peculation.  But 
surely  it  was  the;  last  refinement  of  insult  that  his  funeral  oration,  pro- 
nounced by    the  official  chief  of  the   English   Parliament,  should  be  stolen 


DUKE  OF  WELLINGTON. 
(From  an  oiiginal  portrait  by  Salter.) 

word  for  word  from  a  trashy  panegyric  on  a  second-rate  French  marshal. ' 
To  this  arraignment  the  spectacular  stoic  who  was  most  concerned  deigned 
no  word  of  explanation. 

The  eulogy  of  Gladstone  was  one  of  the  last  to  be  delivered  in  Parlia- 
ment. His  address  was  broad  and  general  in  its  tone.  Without  descend- 
ing to  particulars  he  adduced  the  abstract  and  heroic  quality  of  the  duke's 
life  and  character.  "  It  may  never  be  given,"  said  he,  ^' to  another  subject 
of  the  British  crown  to  perform  services  so  brilliant  as  he  performed  ;  it 
may  never  be  given  to  another  man  to  hold  the  sword  which  was  to  gain 


204  LIFE    AND    TIiMES    OP^    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

the  independence  of  Europe,  to  rally  the  nations  around  it,  and  while 
England  saved  herself  by  her  constancy,  to  save  Europe  by  her  example ;  it 
may  never  be  given  to  another  man,  after  having  attained  such  eminence, 
after  such  an  unexampled  series  of  victories,  to  show  equal  moderation  in 
peace  as  he  has  shown  greatness  in  war,  and  to  devote  the  remainder  of  his 
life  to  the  cause  of  internal  and  external  peace  for  that  country  which  he 
has  so  served  ;  it  may  never  be  given  to  another  man  to  have  equal 
authority  both  with  the  sovereign  he  served  and  the  senate  of  which  he  was 
to  the  end  a  venerated  member  ;  it  may  never  be  given  to  another  man 
after  such  a  career  to  preserve  even  to  the  last  the  full  possession  of  those 
great  faculties  with  which  he  was  endowed,  and  to  carry  on  the  services  of 
one  of  the  most  important  departments  of  the  State  with  unexampled  regu- 
larity   and  success    even  to    the   latest  day  of  his  life." 

The  Duke  of  Wellington  had  held  a  unique  position  in  the  public  life 
of  Great  Britain.  He  could  not  be  said  to  belong  to  any  party  ;  neverthe- 
less his  influence  to  the  day  of  his  death  was  far  greater  than  that  of  any 
other  Briton.  He  had  been  a  father  to  Victoria  when  she  was  a  maiden 
queen.  He  had  always  held  toward  her  a  sentiment  of  chivalric  devotion 
which  amounted  almost  to  worship  ;  and  the  queen  for  her  part  repaid  the 
hero  with  undisguised  adrniration  and  affection.  Her  majesty  was  at  the 
date  of  the  duke's  death  (September  14,  1852)  at  Balmoral.  There  the  sad 
news  was  borne  to  her  by  express  and  telegram.  Her  grief  broke  out  in 
these  words  :  "  We  got  off  our  ponies  at  the  Dhu  Loch,  and  I  had  just  sat 
down  to  sketch  when  Mackenzie  returned,  saying  my  watch  was  safe  at 
home,  and  bringing  letters  ;  amongst  them  there  was  one  from  Lord  Derby^ 
which  I  tore  open,  and  alas  !  it  contained  the  confirmation  of  the  fatal  news 
— jthat  England's,  or  rather  Britain's  pride,  her  glory,  her  hero,  the  greatest 
man  she  ever  produced,  was  no  more !  Sad  day  !  Great  and  irreparable 
loss  !  Lord  Derby  inclosed  a  few  lines  from  Lord  Charles  Wellesley  say- 
ing that  his  dear,  great  father  had  died  on  Tuesday  at  three  o'clock,  after  a 
few  hours'  illness  and  no  suffering.  God's  will  be  done  !  The  day  must 
have  come.  The  duke  was  eighty-three.  It  is  well  for  him  that  he  has 
been  taken  when  still  in  the  possession  of  his  great  mind,  and  without  a 
long  illness  ;  but  what  a  loss  !  One  cannot  think  of  this  country  without 
'the  duke' — an  immortal  hero!  In  him  centered  almost  every  earthly 
honor  a  subject  could  possess.  His  position  was  the  highest  a  subject  ever 
had.  Above  party,  looked  up  to  by  all,  revered  by  the  whole  nation,  the 
friend  of  the  sovereign ;  and  how  simply  he  carried  these  honors  !  With 
what  singleness  of  purpose,  what  straightforwardness,  what  courage  were  all 
his  actions  guided!  The  crown  never  found,  and  I  fear  never  will,  so 
devoted,  loyal,  and  faithful  a  subject  or  stanch  a  supporter." 


DURHAM    LETTER    AND    ECCLESIASTICAL    TITLES    BILL. 


205 


rrrr" 


206 


LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM     E.    GLADSTONE. 


CHAPTER   XIII. 
Coup  d'Etat  and  First  Budget, 

HOMAS  ARCHER  has  remarked  that  the  year  1852  was  bar- 
ren and  suggestive  ;  that  is,  it  was  not  fruitful  in  immediate 
results,  but  promised  much  in  the  hints  that  it  afforded  of  com- 
ing changes.  The  opening  of  Parliament,  in  November  of 
that  year,  found  Disraeli  chancellor  of  the  exchequer.  When 
he  accepted  the  office  he  demanded  time  to  study  financial  conditions  before 
venturing  to  prepare  a  budget.  Such  was  the  state  of  affairs  that  the  task 
imposed  on  him  was  almost  impossible  of  performance.  The  changes 
which  had  supervened  in  the  industries  of  Great  Britain  within  the  past  six 
years  had  rendered  it  well-nigh  hopeless  to  propose  anything  in  the  way  of 
a  financial  scheme  that  would  satisfy  the  country.  The  country  was  torn 
with  conflicting  interests.  The  shipping  interest  was  one.  The  agricul- 
tural interest  was  another.  The  landed  gentry  was  another,  and  the 
farmers  and  their  interests  were  a  fourth.  The  commercial  interest  was  a 
fifth,  and  so  to  the  end  of  classes  and  factions. 

This  condition  Disraeli  had  to  face.  At  lenofth  he  came  forward  with 
his  budget.  He  proposed  to  leave  the  county  taxes  as  they  had  been  ;  also 
the  taxes  for  the  support  of  the  poor — in  English  parlance,  the  poor  rates — 
were  passed  over  without  change.  As  to  the  general  system  of  taxation, 
the  chancellor  launched  out  by  proposing  to  reduce  by  one  half  the  tax  on 
malt,  and  to  abolish  the  discrimination  against  the  malt  of  Scotland.  He 
proposed  a  reduction  of  one  shilling  four  and  a  halfpence  per  pound  in  the 
existing  tea  tax.  The  next  recommendation  was  the  extension  of  the  income 
tax  to  the  funded  properties  and  salaries  in  Ireland.  In  laying  this  impost  he 
drew  a  distinction  between  permanent  and  precarious  incomes.  All  indus- 
trial incomes  w^re  to  be  exempt  to  the  limit  of  a  hundred  pounds  a  year, 
and  all  incomes  on  property  to  the  limit  of  fifty  pounds  a  year. 

As  to  the  general  reduction  in  the  revenues,  the  chancellor  thought  he 
must  add  a  proposition  for  large  expenditures  on  the  defenses  of  the 
country.  For  the  following  year  he  urged  that  the  expenditure  must  be 
increased  by  as  much  as  six  hundred  thousand  pounds.  Any  deficit  that 
might  arise  he  proposed  to  provide  for  by  doubling  and  extending  the 
house  tax,  so  that  all  houses  rated  at  ten  pounds  and  upward  (instead  of 
twenty  pounds,  as  hitherto)  should  be  taxed,  and  the  rate  should  be 
increased  from  ninepence  to  eighteen  pence  on  the  pound.  Shops,  instead 
of  paying  sixpence,  should  pay  a  shilling  a  pound.  The  chancellor  thought 
that  the  ensuing  fiscal  year  would  bring  him,  as  against  extra  expenditures, 
about  two   million  five  hundred  thousand  pounds.      By  the   following  year 


COUP    DETAT    AND    FIRST    BUDGET. 


207 


he  reckoned  that  the  sum  would  be  three  and  a  half  million  pounds.  For 
more  than  lour  hours  Disraeli  occupied  the  attention  of  the  House  with 
explanations  of  the  provisions  of  his  budget  and  arguments  in  its  favor. 

Hereupon  a  lengthy  and  acrimonious  debate  ensued.  Every  faction  by 
its  spokesman  must  be  heard.  Sir  Charles  Wood  opposed  the  budget  on 
the  score  of  the  extension  of  the  income  tax  to  poor  people  and  of  the 
house  rate  to  the  houses  of  humble  farmers.  Cobden  declared  that  the 
measures  proposed  would  cause  to  break  out  again  the  dormant  feud  of  town 
and  country.  Mr.  Robert  Lowe  denounced  the  proposition  to  reduce  the 
malt  tax,  showing  that  the  sole  result  of  it  would  be  a  reduction  in  revenue, 
without  other  salutary  effects.  Mr.  Hume  held  that  producers  and  not 
consumers  would  be  benefited  by  reducing  the  tax  on  malt.  Instead  of  this 
circuitous  method  of  doubtful  expediency  he  would  have  a  system  of  direct 
taxation  reaching  all  property.  As  to  the  house  rate,  that  was  simply  a  tax 
on  the  domestic  life  of  poor  people. 

Sir  James  Graham,  member  for  Carlisle,  spoke  at  length,  analyzing  the 
scheme  and  pointing  out  its  weaknesses  in  a  manner  so  spirited  as  to  make 
Disraeli  wince.  The  chancellor,  however,  rallied  to  the  defense  of  his 
scheme,  and  spoke  with  great  vehemence  and  audacity.  He  handled  the 
question  with  as  much  ability  as  bravado,  being  assured,  no  doubt,  that  in 
any  event  the  House  would  reject  his  measure.  In  his  reply  to  Sir  James 
Graham,  Disraeli  said  :  "  We  had  last  night  from  the  member  for  Carlisle  a 
most  piteous  appeal  to  the  House  upon  the  hardship  of  taxing  poor  clerks 
of  between  one  hundred  pounds  and  a  hundred  and  fifty  pounds  a  year.  He 
stated  that  a  hundred  and  fifty  pounds  is  exactly  the  point  where  skilled  labor 
ends.  You  can  recall  the  effective  manner  in  which  the  rieht  honorable 
gentleman  said  that: — an  unrivaled  artist,  in  my  opinion,  when  he  tells  us 
that  this  is  the  point  where  the  fustian  jacket  ceases  to  be  worn  and  the 
broadcloth  becomes  the  ordinary  attire.  Such,  sir,  was  the  representation 
of  that  eminent  personage,  for  whom  I  have  a  great  regard — I  don't  so  much 
respect  him,  but  I  greatly  regard  him!" 

This  manner  and  matter  were  not  of  the  kind  to  carry  a  budget  through 
Parliament.  It  was  supposed  that  the  debate  would  end  with  the  chancel- 
lor's reply  to  his  assailants;  but  not  so.  No  sooner  had  Disraeli  taken  his 
seat  than  Gladstone  rose  to  answer.  It  had  been  noted  by  some  of  the 
members  that,  when  the  chancellor  was  presenting  the  budget  to  the  House, 
Gladstone  listened  with  profound  attention  and  made  notes.  It  was  not  less 
the  argument,  however,  than  the  attack  on  his  friends,  the  Peelites,  that 
brought  him  to  the  challenge.  In  the  first  place,  he  made  what  was  for  him 
a  pointed  and  personal  delivery  on  some  parts  of  Mr.  Disraeli's  method. 
"The  right  honorable  gentleman,"  said  he,  "must  permit  me  to  tell  him  that 
he  is  not  entitled  to  charge  with  insolence  men  of  as  high  position  and  of  as 


2o8  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

high  character  in  this  House  as  himself.  I  must  tell  him  that  he  is  not 
entitled  to  say  to  my  right  honorable  friend,  the  member  for  Carlisle,  that  he 
does  not  respect  him  ;  and  I  must  tell  him  that  whatever  else  he  may  have 
learned,  he  has  not  learned  to  keep  within  those  limits,  in  discussion,  of 
moderation  and  forbearance  that  ouoht  to  restrain  the  conduct  and  lang-uacj-e 
of  every  member  of  this  House  ;  the  disregard  of  which,  while  it  is  an  offense 
in  the  meanest  amongst  us,  is  an  offense  of  tenfold  weight  when  committed 
by  the  leader  of  the  House  of  Commons." 

The  speaker  then  took  up  the  discussion  of  the  question,  and  consid- 
ered first  the  house-tax  feature  of  the  budget.  He  made  the  point  that 
householders  of  small  means,  including  many  clergymen,  would  be  gathered 
in  the  chancellor's  net.  It  was  a  bad  policy  to  compensate  the  revenue  by 
imposing  a  house  tax  in  place  of  the  reduction  of  one  half  of  the  tax  on 
malt.  He  thought  that  the  price  of  beer  to  the  consumer  would  not  be  per- 
ceptibly affected.  The  brewers  would  gain  the  whole  advantage.  The 
policy  of  substituting  one  tax  for  another  was  a  dangerous  expedient. 
The  income  tax  proposed  was  equally  objectionable.  The  measure  indi- 
cated in  the  budget  was  rather  an  abstraction  than  a  practical  scheme,  and 
England  was  not  founded  on  abstractions.  The  chancellor  had  proposed  to 
use  four  hundred  thousand  pounds  taken  from  the  loan  fund,  and  to  count 
this  as  a  surplus.  The  chancellor  had  no  right  to  charge  his  opponents 
with  collusion  against  him.  On  the  whole,  he  believed  that  the  scheme  set 
forth  by  Disraeli  was  In  Its  tendency,  and  would  prove  to  be  in  Its  results, 
"  the  most  perverted  budget  "  of  which  he  had  any  knowledge.  If  the  House 
should  approve  such  a  scheme  the  day  would  come  when  It  would  rue  Its 
rashness  and  folly. 

We  may  mark  this  sharp  encounter  of  Gladstone  and  Disraeli  as  the 
beginning,  not  indeed  of  their  rivalry,  but  of  their  historical  antagonism;  for 
both  had  now  become  historical  characters.  From  this  date,  November  of 
1852,  to  the  death  of  Lord  Beaconsfield,  was  a  period  of  twenty-eight  years 
and  six  months;  and  during  the  whole  of  this  time,  nearly  an  average  life- 
time, there  was  no  day  In  which  the  two  men  were  not  the  leading  competi- 
tors for  the  primacy  of  England,  and  therefore  pronounced  rivals  in  the 
highest  regions  of  statesmanship. 

For  the  nonce  Gladstone  was  victorious.  When  the  House  was  called 
to  division  on  the  question  of  the  budget  there  was  a  majority  of  nineteen 
against  the  ministry.  The  resignation  of  that  body  followed  as  a  matter 
of  course.*     The  queen  called  the  Earl  of  Aberdeen  to  conduct  the  govern- 

*It  was  oil  tliU  occasion  that  Disraeli  produced  one  of  his  most  celebrated  Diots.  On  the  mornint^  of  his  set- 
ting out  from  Westminster  Mall,  to  put  his  resignation  into  the  queen's  hands,  the  weather  was  cold  and  wet. 
Getting  into  the  coach  with  some  friends,  he  glanced  out  at  the  window  and  said,  with  entire  nonchalance,  "It 
will  be  an  unpleasant  day  for  going  to  Osborne  ! " 


COUP    D  ETAT    AND    FIRST    BUDGET. 


209 


ment,  and  that  nobleman  found  himself  imder  the  necessity  of  creating  a 
ministry  by  coalition.  The  factions  had  to  be  united,  and  several  of  them 
were  represented  in  the  new  cab- 
inet. Gladstone  was  appointed 
Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer  ;  Lord 
Cranworth,  Lord  Chancellor  ;  Earl 
Granville,  Lord  President  of  the 
Council ;  Sir  James  Graham,  First 
Lord  of  the  Admiralty  ;  the  Duke 
of  Argyle,  Lord  Privy  Seal ;  Sir 
Charles  Wood,  President  of  the 
Board  of  Control;  Sir  William 
Molesvvorth,  First  Commissioner  of 
Public  Works ;  Edward  Cardwell, 
President  of  the  Board  of  Trade  ; 
Sir  Alexander  Cockburn,  Attorney 
General;  Richard  Bethell,  Solicitor 
General ;  and  Lord  Lansdowne, 
member  without  office.  To  the 
cabinet  proper  we  may  add  the  sec- 
retaries, as  follows  :  Duke  of  New- 
castle in  the  Colonial  Office  ;  Lord 
John  Russell  for  Foreign  Affairs  ; 
Lord  Palmerston  in  the  Home 
Office;  Sidney  Herbert,  Secretary 
of  War.  Thus  on  a  foundation  of  conflicting  interests  was  established  the 
coalition  government  of  1852. 

Just  at  this  time,  namely,  in  December  of  the  year  last  named,  was  com- 
pleted in  France  the  counter-revolution  which,  expressing  itself  in  many 
forms,  at  last  wafted  Louis  Napoleon  Bonaparte  to  the  imperial  throne.  We 
have  already  referred  to  the  coup  cT etat  oi  December  2,  1851.  By  that  event 
the  President  of  the  Republic  of  1848  got  himself  to  be  the  Prince  President 
of  a  republic  of  his  own.  The  system  at  the  head  of  which  he  was  placed, 
we  must  say  by  the  almost  unanimous  choice  of  his  countrymen,  was  no 
more  than  a  stepping-stone  from  one  estate  to  another.  It  was  known  to  be 
so,  not  only  in  France,  but  throughout  the  world.  After  the  coup  d'etat  the 
rest  followed  as  a  matter  of  course. 

In  September  and  October  of  1852  the  prince  president  made  a  tour 
through  the  provinces  of  the  south  of  France.  As  he  went  from  place  to  place 
his  progress  became  an  ovation.  It  was  intended  to  be  such.  How  much  of  it 
was  spontaneous  and  how  much  factitious  cannot  be  well  known;  but  the 
French  are  facile  in  such  matters,  and  the  spontaneity  came  on  like  a  wave 
14 


WILLIAM  E.  GLADSTONE  AS  CHANCELLOR  OF 

THE  EXCHEQUER  UNDER  THE  EARL  OF 

ABERDEEN,  AGE    FORTY-TWO. 


2IO  lAFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

of  the  sea.  The  prince  president  went  to  Avignon  and  Marseilles  and 
Toulon  and  Aix.  Along  the  route  the  tide  rose  higher  and  higher.  At 
Sevres  his  mission  was  declared  to  be  divine,  and  ''Dicu  le  F^///,"  the  cry  of 
the  old  crusaders,  was  strangely  heard  in  the  streets  as  the  modern  Godfrey 
passed  along.  At  Bordeaux  a  great  banquet  was  given  by  the  Chamber  of 
Commerce,  and  there  the  imperial  scheme  was  openly  revealed.  The  prince 
president  made  a  speech;  most  able  and  conciliatory,  but  with  unhesitating 
avowal  of  the  will  of  France  respecting  himself,  and  acceptance  on  his  part 
of  the  trust.  His  address  showed  the  diplomatist,  the  manager,  the  imperial 
adventurer  at  his  best  estate.  "At  present,"  said  he,  "the  nation  surrounds 
me  with  its  sympathies  because  I  do  not  belong  to  the  family  of  ideologists. 
To  promote  the  welfare  of  the  country  it  is  not  necessary  to  apply  new 
systems,  but  the  chief  poi-nt,  above  all,  is  to  produce  confidence  in  the  pres- 
ent and  security  for  the  future." 

"  For  these  reasons,  it  seems,  France  desires  a  return  to  the  empire. 
There  is  one  objection  to  which  I  must  reply.  Certain  minds  seem  to 
entertain  a  dread  of  war  ;  certain  persons  say  the  empire  is  only  war.  But 
I  say  the  empire  is  peace  \r empire  c'est  la  paix — -a  phrase  that  became  the 
motto  of  the  Second  Empire,]  for  France  desires  it,  and  when  France  is 
satisfied  the  w^orld  is  tranquil.  Glory  descends  by  inheritance,  but  not  war. 
Did  the  princes  who  justly  felt  pride  that  they  were  the  grandchildren  of 
Louis  XIV  recommence  his  wars  .-*  War  is  not  made  for  pleasure,  but 
through  necessity  ;  and  at  this  epoch  of  transition,  where  by  the  side  of  so 
many  elements  of  prosperity  spring  so  many  causes  of  death,  we  may  truly 
say,  Woe  be  to  him  who  gives  the  first  signal  to  a  collision,  the  conse- 
quences of  which  would  be  incalculable  !  I  confess,  however,  that,  like  the 
Emperor,  I  have  man)-  conquests  to  make.  I  wish,  like  him,  to  conquer  by 
conciliation  all  hostile  parties,  and  to  bring  into  the  grand  popular  current 
those  hostile  streams  which  now  lose  themselves  without  profit  to  anyone. 
I  wish  to  restore  to  religion,  morality,  and  opulence  that  still  numerous 
part  of  the  population  which,  though  in  the  bosom  of  the  most  fertile  coun- 
try in  the  world,  can  scarcely  obtain  the  common  necessaries  of  life.  We 
have  immense  waste  territories  to  cultivate,  roads  to  open,  ports  to  dig 
rivers  to  render  navigable,  a  system  of  railroads  to  complete  ;  w^e  have  oppo- 
site to  ^klarseilles  a  vast  kingdom  which  we  must  assimilate  to  France  ;  we 
have  to  bring  all  our  great  western  ports  into  connection  wnth  the  American 
continent  by  a  rapidity  of  communication  wdiich  we  still  want  ;  lastly,  we 
have  ruins  to  restore,  false  gods  to  overthrow,  and  truths  to  be  made 
triumphant.  This  is  the  sense  which  I  attach  to  the  empire,  if  the  empire 
is  to  be  restored.  Such  are  the  conquests  which  I  contemplate ;  and  all 
you  who  surround  me,  and  who,  like  me,  desire  your  country's  welfare — you 
are  mv  soldiers." 


COUP    DETAT    AND    FIRST    BUDGET.  211 

After  the  Bordeaux  banquet  everything  went  on  in  a  blaze  of  glory. 
It  is  not  our  part  here  to  recount  the  rapid  and  brilliant  stages  in  the  prog- 
ress by  which  the  Prince  President  was  converted  into  the  Emperor  Napo- 
leon III.  It  was  on  the  2d  of  December  of  1852,  a  year  to  a  day  from  the 
coup  d'etat,  that  the  empire  was  proclaimed.  The  vote  of  the  people  had 
been  announced  on  the  first  of  the  month,  and  was  as  follows  :  "  For  the 
imperial  regime,  7,864,189  ;  in  the  negative,  263,145  ;  votes  of  the  indifferent 
and  the  like,  63,326.  The  Church  rallied,  and  in  every  cathedral  was  heard 
the  chant,  "  Save,  O  Lord,  our  Emperor  Napoleon." 

This  great  and  withal  peaceable  revolution  in  France  had  a  marked 
effect  throughout  Europe.  It  was  in  the  nature  of  a  sensation  on  a  vast 
scale.  In  England  there  was  a  conflict  of  political  and  social  emotions. 
England  knew  well  the  adventurous  character  of  the  Bonaparte  who  had 
been  raised  by  the  voice  of  millions  to  the  imperial  throne.  As  to  the 
empire  itself  the  governing  powers  in  England  might  well  sympathize  with 
that,  for  it  seemed  to  terminate  that  continental  republic  which  could  but 
be  a  menace  to  the  existing  political  order  so  long  as  it  should  abide.  But 
Great  Britain  was  solemnly  on  record  never  to  recognize  any  Bonaparte  on 
a  European  throne.  This  record  had  been  made  at  a  time  when  there 
was  good  reason  on  the  part  of  the  Hanoverian  monarchy  and  the  English 
people  to  have  a  dread  of  Bonapartism  in  all  its  forms.  After  thirty-seven 
years,  however,  a  new  state  and  a  new  sentiment  and  interest  had  super- 
vened, and  there  was  less  cause  to  dread  such  title  as  Napoleon  III.  His- 
tory had  prepared  a  condition  which  must  soon  lead  not  only  to  a  recon- 
ciliation, but  to  the  alliance  of  the  two  powers,  insular  and  peninsular,  in  a 
common  cause  against  Slavic  aggression  in  the  east  of  Europe. 

The  beginning  of  the  year  1853  found  Gladstone  chancellor  of  the 
exchequer  in  the  ministry  of  Aberdeen.  As  such  the  very  duties  and  diffi- 
culties before  which  the  preceding  ministry  had  broken  to  pieces  were 
devolved  on  him.  He  must  now  take  up  the  very  work  in  attempting 
which  Disraeli,  by  the  judgment  of  the  country,  had  failed.  The  first  two 
months  of  the  year  were  spent  by  him  in  perhaps  the  hardest  study  of  his 
life.  In  addition  to  his  own  business  instincts,  inherited  from  his  father's 
line,  and  in  addition  to  all  that  he  had  learned  of  the  finances  of  his  coun- 
try after  his  entrance  into  public  life,  he  had  now,  under  the  immense 
weight  of  public  responsibility,  to  review  the  tremendous  question  before  him 
and  to  plant  himself  on  a  solid  foundation  under  peril  of  speedily  following 
his  predecessor  into  the  limbo  of  failures.  The  ordeal  was  by  much  the 
greatest  of  all  that  he  had  thus  far  encountered  ;  but  his  strong  purpose, 
rising  steadily  from  a  calm  and  equable  mind,  enabled  him  not  only  to  mas- 
ter the  situation,  but  to  emerge  from  the  trial  with  a  chorus  of  applauses. 

It  was  on  the  8th  of  April,  1853,  two  months  after  the  opening  of  the 


2  12  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

new  Parliament,  that  Gladstone  made  his  first  public  utterance  on  the  great 
questions  with  which  he  had  to  deal.  On  that  night  he  presented  his  plan 
for  the  reduction  of  the  public  debt.  He  prepared  and  submitted  fifteen 
resolutions,  covering  nearly  all  the  elements  of  the  debt,  and  proposing  the 
means  whereby  the  same  might  be  reduced.  This  he  deemed  expedient 
before  presenting  his  first  budget.  Some  of  his  resolutions  looked  to  the 
liquidation  of  the  South  Sea  stocks  and  of  certain  bank  annuities,  some  of 
which  had  existed  for  a  hundred  and  twenty-three  years.  He  found  that 
there  was  a  total  of  the  minor  stocks  carried  along  in  the  business  of  Great 
Britain  amounting  to  nine  and  a  half  million  pounds.  To  cover  this  com- 
plicated mass  of  indebtedness  he  proposed  the  issuance  of  a  "new  fund  on 
which  the  interest  would  be  reduced  by  a  quarter  of  one  per  cent,  and  that 
the  new  fund  should  be  subject  to  payment,  involving  its  total  extinction. 

In  the  second  place,  the  chancellor  boldly  proposed  that  the  exchequer 
bonds  of  the  government  should  be  refunded  with  a  reduction  of  one  per 
cent.  The  third  part  of  the  plan  contemplated  the  refunding  of  the  three 
percent  consols  at  a  lower  rate.  The  funds  included  under  this  part  of  the 
scheme  amounted  to  about  two  and  a  half  billions  of  dollars  in  our  account- 
ing. The  ultimate  motif  of  the  whole  scheme  was  the  unification  of  the 
national  debt  of  Great  Britain  in  a  permanent  fund  at  two  and  a  half  per 
cent,  the  existence  of  which  was  to  be  accepted  in  theory  as  perpetual. 

Ten  days  after  the  presentation  of  the  project  relative  to  the  national 
debt  Mr.  Gladstone  broucrht  forward  his  first  budgfeL  The  readino-  of  the 
same  and  the  explanation  of  it — the  proposition  of  successive  measures  and 
th  edemonstration  of  their  advisability — occupied  fully  five  hours.  It  was 
noticed  that  from  the  beginning  of  the  presentation  the  House  gave  the 
profoundest  attention.  The  interest  rose  as  the  speaker  proceeded. 
Applause  broke  out  at  this  point  and  that.  It  was  evident  that  a  master 
had  appeared  on  the  scene.  It  is  doubtful  whether  any  form  of  public 
appearance  was  ever  more  consistent  with  the  Gladstonian  manner  and 
method  than  was  the  delivery  of  his  budget,  and  it  may  be  safely  alleged 
that  no  other  of  his  budgets  ever  exhibited  more  cogency  or  was  inter- 
spersed with  a  greater  number  of  paragraphs  worthy  to  be  classed  as  par- 
liamentary oratory  than  was  this  first,  of  x^pril  i8,  1853.  The  budget  seemed 
to  be  evolved  from  the  principle  known  as   "  elasticity  of  revenue." 

The  basis  of  the  budget  was  Gladstone's  estimate  of  the  revenue 
required  for  the  ensuing  fiscal  year.  This  he  set  at  ^52,990,000.  His 
estimate  of  the  expenditures  were  less  by  ^807,000.  Part  of  the  surplus 
thus  arising,  however,  the  speaker  would  not  consider,  since  not  all  of 
the  surplus  was  derived  from  permanent  sources.  As  to  the  principle  of 
taxation,  he  accepted,  first  of  all,  the  income  rates,  and  would  retain  them — 
this  for  the  reason   that  by   the  resources   thus   provided  the   government 


COUP    D  KTAT    AND    P^IRST    BUDGET.  213 

might  in  case  of  war  be  prepared  at  any  time  for  a  great  mcrease  in  the 
armies  and  navies  of  the  kingdom.  He  proposed,  however,  a  sHding  scale 
in  the  income  tax,  by  which  the  same  should  run  for  two  years  at  seven- 
pence  the  pound,  then  for  two  years  at  sixpence  the  pound,  and  then  for 
three  years  at  fivepence  the  pound,  at  the  end  of  which  time,  namely,  in 
April  of  i860,  the  tax  should  expire  altogether. 

In  order  to  compensate  the  revenue  for  certain  reductions  in  other 
parts  of  the  schedule  of  taxation,  the  speaker  proposed  that  the  income  tax 
should  reach  down  and  include  all  those  whose  incomes  amounted  to  a  hun- 
dred and  fifty  pounds  per  annum,  and  that  below  this  all  whose  incomes 
amounted  to  a  hundred  pounds  per  annum  should  be  taxed  thereon  at  the 
rate  of  fivepence  the  pound.  In  the  case  of  Ireland,  that  country,  which 
had  profited  so  much  by  late  reductions  in  taxation,  should  be  subject  to  a 
part  of  the  burden  sufficient  to  produce  a  revenue  of  ^460,000  a  year.  The 
chancellor  then  took  up  the  question  of  taxing  legacies,  and  proposed  a 
rate  thereon  which  should  yield  for  the  ensuing  fiscal  year  about  five  hun- 
dred thousand  pounds,  and  for  the  following  year  about  four  times  that 
sum  ;  and  it  was  suggested  that  the  principle  of  taxing  legacies  should 
become  permanent  as  the  means  of  replenishing  the  public  revenues.  In 
the  next  place,  the  speaker  took  up  the  special  laws  relating  to  the  taxation 
of  spirits  in  Scotland  and  Ireland.  Under  this  head  he  proposed  to  relieve 
the  Irish  people  of  a  burden  of  about  four  and  a  half  million  pounds. 

If  the  first  part  of  the  Gladstonian  scheme  included  several  iterris  of 
increase  in  the  burdens  of  the  people  the  other  part  embraced  a  larger  num- 
ber of  items  in  the  way  of  reduction.  He  agreed  that  the  soap  tax  should 
be  remitted  to  the  extent  of  more  than  a  million  pounds.  The  tax  on  life 
assurances  should  be  reduced  by  two  shillings  in  the  pound.  He  would  also 
reduce  the  cost  of  the  receipt  stamps,  so  as  to  make  them  uniformly  of  the 
value  of  a  penny  each.  The  tax  of  apprenticeship  was  reduced  from  a  pound 
to  two  shillings  sixpence  on  each  indenture.  In  like  manner  the  taxes  on 
certificates,  on  coaches,  on  post-horses  and  dogs  were  reduced.  The  tea 
tax  was  lessened  by  more  than  one  half.  On  the  whole  the  reductions 
amounted  by  estimate  to  more  than  five  and  a  quarter  million  pounds, 
covering  one  hundred  and  thirty-three  items  in  the  list  of  abatements. 

The  one  point  in  the  whole  scheme  about  which  the  chancellor  had 
greatest  anxiety  was  the  tax  on  incomes.  He  aimed  to  ameliorate  the 
feature  of  Income  taxes  by  placing  a  limit  of  time  upon  them.  He  showed 
that  according  to  his  scheme  they  were- to  expire  In  i860.  He  aimed  to 
fortify  his  position  with  arguments,  establishing  the  justice  and  expediency 
of  resorting  to  the  Income  tax  in  times  of  necessit)\  He  showed  that  he 
could  not — Indeed,  that  no  government  could — enter  into  a  measure  for 
exactly  equalizing  the  Income  rates  among  all  whom  the  law  might  touch. 


2  14  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

He  proved  out  of  histor}^  the  necessity  of  such  an  expedient  to  meet  the 
emergencies  that  from  time  to  time  afflicted  the  public  life  of  nations.  He 
appealed  to  such  instances  in  the  history  of  Great  Britain,  selecting  his  sub- 
ject-matter Irom  such  events  as  would  be  likely  to  touch  the  patriotism  of 
his  countrymen.  "It  was,"  said  he,  "  in  the  crisis  of  revolutionary  war  that 
when  Mr.  Pitt  found  the  resources  of  taxation  were  failing  under  him  his 
mind  fell  back  upon  the  conception  of  the  income  tax;  and  when  he  pro- 
posed it  to  Parliament  that  great  man,  possessed  with  his  great  idea,  raised 
his  eloquence  to  an  unusual  height  and  power." 

The  chancellor  showed  that  in  the  whole  period  between  the  rupture 
of  the  Treaty  of  Amiens  and  the  downfall  of  Napoleon  the  income  tax  had 
lifted  the  revenues  of  Great  Britain  from  about  twenty  million  pounds  to 
more  than  three  times  that  sum,  and  that  the  deficiency  in  the  period 
referred  to  was  reduced  by  the  same  expedient  from  a  figure  that  would 
have  been  ruinous  to  a  minimum  of  about  two  million  pounds  annually. 
Against  such  benefits  the  alleged  inequality  of  the  tax  could  not  stand. 
Besides,  the  hardship,  whatever  it  was,  was  temporary,  and  would  soon  pass 
away.  No  man  of  patriotic  temper  and  moderate  in  his  opinions  could 
rightly  adduce  the  supposed  Inequalities  of  the  income  tax  in  bar  of  a 
method  which  produced  so  great  benefits.  Besides,  to  relinquish  the  tax 
was  to  throw  the  government  back  upon  chimerical  schemes  which  might 
please  the  visionary,  but  which  could  only  end  in  disaster.  He  admitted 
the  undesirability  of  retaining  the  income  tax  as  a  part  of  the  permanent 
scheme  of  government  finances.  He  admitted  that  it  was  impossible  in 
preparing  a  public  budget  to  reach  results  that  should  be  satisfactory  to  all. 

In  such  a  question,  moreover,  the  spirit  of  indecision  would  never  do. 
There  must  be  a  bold,  rational,  and  temperate  method  of  finance,  as  well  as 
a  just,  considerate,  and  prudent  method.  "  Whatever  )ou  do,"  said  the 
chancellor  of  the  exchequer,  "  in  regard  to  the  income  tax,  you  must  be 
bold,  you  must  be  intelligible,  you  must  be  decisive.  You  must  not  palter 
with  it.  If  you  do  I  have  striven  at  least  to  point  out,  as  well  as  my  feeble 
powers  will  permit,  the  almost  desecration,  I  would  say,  certainly  the  gross 
breach  of  duty  to  your  country,  of  which  you  will  be  found  guilty,  in  thus 
jeopardizing  one  of  the  most  valuable  among  all  its  material  resources.  I 
believe  It  to  be  of  vital  importance,  whether  you  keep  this  tax  or  whether 
you  part  with  it,  that  )-ou  should  either  keep  It  or  leave  it  In  a  state  in 
which  it  would  be  fit  for  service  in  an  emergency,  and  that  it  wnll  be  impos- 
sible to  do  if  you  break  up  the  basis  of  your  income  tax. 

"  If  the  committee  have  followed  me,  Ihey  will  understand  that  we  stand 
on  the  principle  that  the  income  tax  ought  to  be  marked  as  a  temporary 
measure  ;  that  the  public  feeling  that  relief  should  be  given  to  intelligence 
and  skill   as  compared  with  property  ought  to  be   met,  and  may  be   met ; 


COUP    1)  KTAT    AND    FIRST    BUDGET.  215 

that  the  income  tax  in  its  operation  ought  to  be  mitigated  by  every  rational 
means  compatible  with  its  integrity,  and,  above  all,  that  it  should  be  asso- 
ciated in  the  last  term  of  its  existence,  as  it  was  in  the  first,  with  those  re- 
missions oi  indirect  taxation  which  have  so  greatly  redounded  to  the  profit 
of  this  country,  and  have  set  so  admirable  an  example — an  example  that  has 
already  in  some  quarters  proved  contagious  to  other  nations  of  the  earth. 

"  These  are  the  principles  on  which  we  stand,  and  the  figures.  I  have 
shown  you  that  if  you  grant  us  the  taxes  which  we  ask,  the  moderate 
amount  of  two  and  a  half  million  pounds  in  the  w'hole,  and  much  less  than 
that  sum  for  the  present  year,  you,  or  the  Parliament  which  may  be  in  ex- 
istence in  i860,  will  be  in  the  condition,  if  you  so  think  fit,  to  part  with  the 
income  tax. 

"  These  are  the  proposals  of  the  government.  They  may  be  approved 
or  they  may  be  condemned,  but  I  have  this  full  confidence,  that  it  will  be 
admitted  that  we  have  not  sought  to  evade  the  difficulties  of  the  position; 
that  we  have  not  concealed  those  difiiculties  either  from  ourselves  or  from 
others  ;  that  we  have  not  attempted  to  counteract  them  by  narrow^  or  flimsy 
expedients  ;  that  we  have  prepared  plans  which,  if  you  will  adopt  them,  will 
go  some  way  to  close  up  many  vexed  financial  questions,  which,  if  not  now 
settled,  may  be  attended  with  public  inconvenience,  and  even  with  public 
danger  in  future  years  and  under  less  favorable  circumstances ;  that  we 
have  endeavored,  in  the  plans  we  have  now  submitted  to  you,  to  make  the 
path  of  our  succesors  in  future  years  not  more  arduous,  but  more  easy  ;  and 
I  may  be  permitted  to  add  that,  while  we  have  sought  to  do  justice  to  the 
ereat  labor  community  of  England  bv  furthering  their  relief  from  indirect 
taxation,  we  have  not  been  guided  by  any  desire  to  put  one  class  against 
another.  We  have  felt  we  should  best  maintain  our  own  honor,  that  we 
should  best  meet  the  views  of  Parliament,  and  best  promote  the  interests  of 
the  country,  by  declining  to  draw  any  invidious  distinction  between  class 
and  class  by  adopting  it  to  ourselves  as  a  sacred  aim  to  diffuse  and  dis- 
tribute the  burdens  wnth  equal  and  impartial  hand  ;  and  we  have  the  con- 
solation of  believing  that  by  proposals  such  as  these  we  contribute,  as  far  as 
in  us  lies,  not  only  to  develop  the  material  resources  of  the  country,  but  to 
Ivnit  the  various  parts  of  this  great  nation  yet  more  closely  than  ever  to 
that  throne  and  to  those  institutions  under  which  it  is  our  happiness  to  live." 

Notwithstanding  the  length  of  the  address  the  speaker  held  the  sympa- 
thetic attention  of  the  House  to  the  close,  and  was  greatly  applauded.  It  is 
doubtful  whether  there  had  ever  been  so  masterful  an  exhibition  of  finan- 
cial talents  by  any  chancellor  of  the  exchequer  in  Great  Britain.  The  applause 
with  which  the  address — and  that  meant  the  budget — was  received  indicated 
clearly  its  acceptance  by  Parliament.  It  signified  the  acceptance  of  the 
scheme  without  modification.     The  formality  of  the  House,  however,  required 


2l6  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM     E.    GLADSTONE. 

debate.  It  is  the  proper  thinir  under  such  circumstances  that  the  leader  of 
the  opposition  shall  have  his  say.  Custom  has  even  indicated  the  general 
tenor  of  what  he  shall  urge  upon  the  attention  of  the  House.  This  duty,  or 
formality,  as  the  case  may  be,  was  devolved  on  Disraeli,  who  rose  in  reply 
and  expressed  in  general  terms  his  approval  of  the  scheme  which  the 
chancellor  of  the  exchequer  had  presented.  He  claimed  that  the  princi- 
ples on  which  the  budget  was  founded  were  virtually  the  same  as  underlay 
the  scheme  which  he  had  the  honor  twice  to  present  to  the  House  of 
Commons.  He  claimed,  however,  that  the  particular  evolution  of  the 
budo-et  touching  this  question  and  the  other  was  not  in  accord  with  sound 
policy,  and  could  not  be  accepted  by  her  majesty's  opposition.  Hereupon 
he  entered  into  an  arraignment  of  several  clauses  of  the  budget,  particularly 
that  clause  which  related  to  the  income  tax.  The  income  tax,  the  speaker 
claimed,  was  repugnant  to  the  British  Constitution,  and  should  be  eliminated 
from  the  scheme  of  taxation  just  as  soon  as  possible.  If  the  tax  should  be 
continued  at  all  for  the  present  it  ought  to  be  reduced  in  rate  and  strictly 
limited  in  the  time  to  run.  All  surplus  in  the  treasury  ought  to  be  applied 
to  the  reduction  and  extinction  of  a  system  of  taxation  which  no  minister 
could  control  and  which  no  people  could  long  endure. 

Mr.  Disraeli  then  proceeded  to  the  question  of  the  land  taxes  and  the 
taxes  on  legacies,  as  indicated  in  the  Gladstonian  scheme.  He  claimed  that 
the  general  tendency  of  the  budget  was  against  the  landed  properties  of  the 
kino-dom  and  in  favor  of  the  commercial  interests.  Taxation  ouo^ht  not  to 
lie  heavily  on  real  property.  Government,  instead  of  relieving  the  farmers 
of  Great  Britain,  was  proposing  to  put  them  under  still  heavier  burdens. 
He  pointed  out  inconsistencies  in  the  course  of  several  statesmen  who  were 
now  supporting  the  ministerial  scheme.  He  attacked  Lord  John  Russell  for 
having-  denounced  the  income  tax  in  Sir  Robert  Peel's  day,  while  now  he 
was  in  the  attitude  of  supporting  the  same  measure.  He  claimed  with  some 
reason  that  the  favor  which  he  had  aimed  to  extend  to  Ireland  was  omitted 
from  the  budget,  and  that  the  Irish  people  were  afflicted  thereby. 

The  Gladstonian  report  w^as  before  Parliament  for  two  months  and 
nine  days.  During  that  period  the  questions  involved  were  discussed  from 
time  to  time,  and  many  motions  were  made  for  amendment  and  substitu- 
tion ;  but  all  to  no  avail.  On  the  27th  of  June,  1853,  the  matter  came  to  a 
vote.  At  one  time  a  motion  made  by  Sir  Edward  Bulwer-Lytton  to  recon- 
sider the  part  of  Mr.  Gladstone's  scheme  relating  to  the  income  tax  on 
farmers  was  near  meeting  the  approval  of  the  House,  but  even  that  proposi- 
tion was  defeated  by  a  majority  of  twenty-one.  The  budget  as  a  whole,  and 
without  modification,  was  accepted  by  a  large  majority.  The  vote  signified 
the  approval  of  the  principles  and  methods  of  the  chancellor  and  the  ulterior 
purpose  to  prepare  in  advance  for  war,  which  was  even  now  at  the  door. 


FRENCH    ALLIANCE    AND    CRIMEAN    WAR.  21/ 

CHAPTER  XIV. 

French  Alliance  and  Crimean  War. 

N  the  remote  horizon  of  the  present  age,  hidden  from  the  scenes 
that  now  are  by  the  far-off  smoke  clouds  of  the  civil  war  in 
America  and  the  similar  darkness  of  the  Franco-Prussian  con- 
flict in  Europe,  lies  the  drama  of  the  Crimean  War.  The  ante- 
cedents of  that  struggle  were  as  peculiar  as  those  of  any  other 
contention  among  the  nations  of  modern  times.  The  causes  of  the  war 
were  so  complicated  and  reached  so  far  as  to  involve,  sooner  or  later,  the 
larger  part  of  modern  history.  The  disputes,  indeed,  out  of  which  the 
Crimean  War  followed  as  a  result  reached  down  into  the  religious  condi- 
tions of  Europe  and  along  the  lines  of  those  conditions  backward  to  the  age 
of  Constantine,  if  not  to  the  age  of  Augustus.  The  so-called  Eastern  Ques- 
tion has  so  many  aspects  that  a  biographical  history  extending  through  the 
period  cannot  be  expected  to  set  them  forth  with  anything  like  completeness. 

The  principal  parties  to  the  controversy  were  Great  Britain,  France, 
Turkey,  and  Russia;  but  all  the  powers  of  Europe  were  more  or  less  con- 
cerned. As  to  Great  Britain,  she  had  adopted  the  policy  of  upholding  the 
status  in  quo  in  Europe.  She  had  her  own  motives,  not  a  few,  for  wishing 
that  the  Ottoman  power,  though  an  Islamite  dominion,  should  hold  its  own 
as  a  kind  of  barrier  against  the  growing  ambitions  of  Russia.  Commercial 
reasons  and  political  reasons  alike  prevailed  with  her  to  desire  the  indirect 
control  of  the  eastern  outlets  of  the  Mediterranean  into  the  Black  Sea. 
This  involved  the  desire  on  the  part  of  Great  Britain  that  the  power  of 
Russia  should  not  be  established  and  confirmed  on  the  Black  Sea ;  for  that 
would  involve  an  early  forcing  of  the  way  by  that  power  through  the  straits 
and  into  the  Mediterranean.  As  to  religious  prejudices,  Great  Britain  does 
not  allow  these  to  stand  in  the  wind  of  her  commercial  interests  and  politi- 
cal ambitions ;  albeit  she  makes  great  capital  before  the  world  of  her  claim 
to  be  the  defender  of  the  Protestant  faith. 

As  to  Turkey,  that  power  was  in  its  decadence.  She  had  in  her  prov- 
inces, notably  in  Greece,  a  large  population  of  professing  Christians. 
Between  these  and  the  prevailing  Moslemite  dominion  there  was  no  accord 
of  sympathy  and  but  little  common  interest.  The  Christians  in  Turkey 
belonged  for  the  most  part  to  the  Eastern  Church,  so  that  Russia  might 
claim  to  be  their  champion  and  protector.  These  conditions  were  highly 
favorable  to  edgre  on  the  risino^  conflict. 

As  to  France,  though  the  "  empire  was  peace,"  according  to  the  dec- 
laration of  the  new  emperor,  he  himself  needed  participation,  and  if  possible 
leadership,   in   the    coming  war.      He   needed    it   in    order  to    manifest    his 


2l8  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTUXF. 

Strength  and  capacities.  He  needed  it  in  order  to  confirm  his  throne.  He 
needed  it  as  one  of  those  dazzHnof  circumstances  in  which  the  French  nation 
so  much  dehghts.  He  needed  it  to  show  that  he  w^as  a  true  Napoleon.  He 
had  obtained  recognition  from  all  the  crowned  heads  of  Europe,  with  the 
exception  of  Czar  Nicholas.  That  potentate  had  deigned  to  designate 
Napoleon  as  coiLsin,  but  not  as  brother — a  circumstance  that  rankled  more^ 
we  doubt  not,  in  the  breast  of  the  empress  than  in  the  heart  of  Napoleon. 
So  the  emperor  set  about  to  make  an  alliance  with  England.  Great  Britain, 
having  declared  that  she  would  never  assent,  assented  ;  and  with  the  growth 
of  the  war  portent  in  the  East  Napoleon  HI  found  himself  side  by  side  with 
Victoria  and  the  sultan.  Though  ro)'al  enough,  it  was  one  of  the  most 
motley  teams  that  ever  went  to  war ! 

The  particular  grievance  that  led  to  the  rupture  was  the  dispute  between 
the  Latin  and  Greek  Churches  over  the  claim  to  precedence  in  the  guardian- 
ship of  the  holy  places  in  Palestine.  The  age  will  come  when  the  absurdity 
of  such  a  contention  will  strike  the  reader  as  verging  closely  to  the  impos- 
sible. But  as  late  as  the  middle  of  our  century  such  questions  were  still  very 
real,  and  in  their  decision  the  great  nations  of  Europe  drew  die  sword. 

B}' his  elevation  to  the  imperial  throne  Napoleon  HEbecamethe  politi- 
cal head  of  the  Roman  Catholic,  or  Latin,  Church  in  Europe.  By  like  rela- 
tion Czar  Nicholas  was  the  head  of  the  Greek  Catholic,  or  Eastern,  Church. 
Any  dispute  between  the  two  great  divisions  of  Christendom  would  place 
the  French  emperor  and  Russian  czar  in  diametrical  antagonism. 

The  arranorements  made  in  Palestine  between  the  Christians  and  the 
Mussulmans  conceded  to  the  former  the  possession  of  certain  holy  places; 
but  the  Christians  disputed  among  themselves  as  to  which  faction  should  be 
the  ^\!i^x6^\2Si^ par  excellence.  There  was  a  church  in  Bethlehem, and  through 
this  the  Latin  monks  must  pass  to  reach  the  Sacred  Grotto.  There  was  a 
principal  door  to  the  church  and  a  door  to  the  manger,  and  these  doors  were 
locked.  Should  a  Latin  monk  carry  the  key,  or  should  a  Greek  priest  have 
it.'*  Should  the  Latin  monks  have  the  right  to  place  in  the  sanctuary  of  the 
nativity  a  silver  star  bearing  the  arms  of  France,  or  should  those  Western 
symbols  be  excluded  1  The  French  minister  at  Constantinople,  in  Decem- 
ber of  1852,  secured  from  the  sultan  permission  to  place  the  silver  star  in  the 
sanctuary  of  Bethlehem,  and  to  have  the  keys  of  both  church  and  manger. 
This  concession  was  resented  by  the  Russian  ambassador,  and  the  czar 
declared  that  the  change  contemplated  in  the  management  of  the  holy  places 
was  unjust  and  would  be  resisted.  The  thing  conceded  by  Islam  to  Rome 
was  hateful  to  the  Greek  cross. 

Meanwhile  the  czar  had  in  a  conversation  with  Sir  Hamilton  Seymour 
declared  that  "we  [meaning  England  and  Russia]  have  on  our  hands  a  sick 
man — a  very  sick  man  ;  it  will  be  a  great  misfortune  if  one  of  these  days  he 


FRENCH    ALLIANCE    AND    CRIMEAN    WAR. 


219 


should  slip  away  from  us  before  the  necessary  arrangements  have  been 
made."  The  "necessary  arrangements"  to  which  Nicholas  referred  hinted 
at  what  England  and  Russia  ought  to  do  in  a  friendly  way  on  the  occasion 
of  the  funeral !  It  was  thus  that  Turkey,  in  the  parlance  of  the  day,  and  even 
to  the  present,  came  by  the  czar's  wit  to  be  called  the  Sick  Man  of  the  East. 


ALBERT,  OF  SAXt-COBURG  AND  GOTHA,  THE  LAl'E  PRINCE  GON.^oRT. 


But  the  overtures  of  Nicholas  to  Great  Britain  were  not  acceptable; 
the  alliance  of  France  was  chosen  instead,  and  the  czar  sent  an  army  corps 
into  the  Danubian  provinces  as  a  precautionary  measure,  demanding  at  the 
same  time  of  Austria  that  the  Turkish  troops  should  be  required  to  withdraw 
from  Montenesfro.  At  this  iuncture  it  was  believed  that  both  Austria  and 
Prussia  would  join  the  alliance  in  support  of  Turkey  against  the  aggressions 
of  Nicholas.    But  the  central  German  powers  decided  to  remain  neutral,  at  the 


220  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

same  time  declaring  against  the  policy  of  the  czar.  The  alliance  contented 
itself  with  receiving  Sardinia  as  a  member  of  the  league.  This  made  the 
combination  fourfold — Enorlish,  French,  Sardinian,  Turkish — ao^ainst  Russia, 
single  and  alone.  There  were  futile  efforts  at  neo^otiation,  but  these  came  to 
naught,  and  the  Eastern  Question  was  left  to  the  arbitrament  of  the  sword. 

The  precise  reason  for  going  to  war  was  differently  stated  by  the  dif- 
ferent parties  to  it.  Some  said  that  itw^as  to  maintain  the  traditional  policy 
of  upholding  the  Ottoman  empire,  to  which  England  in  particular  had  sub- 
scribed. Albert,  the  prince  consort,  said  in  a  semiofficial  way  that  Great 
Britain  went  to  war  with  Russia  because  that  power  menaced  the  Otto- 
man empire,  and  at  the  same  time  sought  to  convert  the  various  prov- 
inces on  the  Black  Sea  into  Russian  dependencies.  This,  the  prince  claimed, 
would  be  in  violation  of  that  system  of  balance  of  power  to  which  all  Europe 
was  agreed.  Mr.  Gladstone  held  this  view,  namely,  that  the  public  law  of 
Europe  was  defied  and  violated  by  the  course  of  the  czar,  and  that  such 
violation  must  be  punished,  not  so  much  by  England  alone  as  by  the  united 
powers  of  Europe. 

As  for  France,  that  nation  w^ent  to  war  for  religious  sentiment  and 
human  glory.  It  is  inconceivable  that  the  claim  of  the  Greek  Church  to  pos- 
sess and  control  certain  places  in  and  about  Jerusalem  should  provoke  a  great 
people  to  the  pitch  of  war.  That,  however,  was  assigned  as  the  reason — a 
reason  that  did  not  greatly  prevail  in  England.  Lord  John  Russell  declared 
in  a  public  paper,  in  January  of  1853,  that  the  Church  quarrel  was  in  the  bot- 
tom of  the  difficulty;  but  Lord  John  contended  that  so  far  as  this  quarrel 
extended  Russia  was  in  the  right !  So  there  w^as  a  period  of  negotiation. 
Prince  Menshikoff  demanded  of  the  Sublime  Porte  a  guarantee  that  the 
Greek  Church  should  not  be  impeded  in  the  exercise  of  her  prerogatives 
about  the  holy  places.  This  demand  the  sultan  would  not  grant,  where- 
upon the  Russian  ambassador  went  away  and  the  czar  sent  an  ultimatum. 

It  was  in  the  beginning  of  July  that  a  Russian  army,  crossing  the  Pruth, 
entered  Moldavia  and  Wallachia.  The  czar  issued  a  proclamation  justify- 
ing his  course  as  necessary  to  secure  from  the  porte  a  recognition  and 
guarantee  of  Russian  rights.  He  disclaimed  the  intention  of  going  to  war. 
For  several  months  Great  Britain  sought  in  a  desultory  way  to  prevent  the 
conflict;  but  on  the  4th  of  October,  1853,  Turkey  declared  war  against 
Russia.  The  news  produced  great  excitement  throughout  England.  There 
were  many  public  meetings.  The  English  nation  demanded  to  know  the 
attitude  of  the  government.  Just  at  this  juncture,  namely,  on  the  12th  of 
October,  Mr.  Gladstone  was  invited  to  Manchester  to  deliver  an  address 
on  the  occasion  of  the  dedication  of  a  statue  to  the  memory  of  Sir  Robert 
Peel.  He  must,  in  the  nature  of  the  case,  at  least  refer  to  the  subject  that 
was  uppermost  in  all  minds. 


FRENCH    ALLIANCE    AND    CRIMEAN    WAR.  221 

In  doing  so  the  chancellor  of  the  exchequer  spoke  of  the  ambitions 
and  aggressions  of  Russia,  which  threatened  to  break  the  peace  of  the  whole 
world.  In  the  nature  of  the  case  the  czar's  policy  must  first  strike  and 
undo  the  Ottoman  empire.  It  was  best  to  resist  Russia  at  the  start.  Great 
Britain  would  set  herself  to  uphold  Turkey  as  a  bulwark  against  Slavic 
ambition.  Great  Britain  did  not  desire  war,  and  for  that  reason  was  willing 
to  negotiate.  War  was  a  horror  not  to  be  rashly  provoked.  Negotiation 
might  result  in  nothing.  "  Negotiation,"  said  the  speaker,  "  is  beset  with 
delay,  intrigue,  and  chicane  ;  but  these  are  not  so  horrible  as  war,  if  negotia- 
tion can  be  made  to  result  in  saving  this  country  from  a  calamity  which 
deprives  the  nation  of  subsistence  and  arrests  the  operations  of  industry. 
To  attain  that  result  if  possible — still  to  attain  it,  if  still  possible,  which  is 
even  yet  their  hope — her  majesty's  ministers  have  persevered  in  exercising 
that  self-command  and  that  self-restraint  which  Impatience  may  mistake  for 
indifference,  feebleness,  or  cowardice,  but  which  are  truly  the  crowning  great- 
ness of  a  great  people,  and  which  do  not  evince  the  want  of  readiness  to 
vindicate,  when  the  time  comes,  the  honor  of  this  country." 

In  this  expression  the  reader  may  discover  the  cautious  spirit  of  Glad- 
stone, resolute  enough  to  undertake  even  war,  but  always  disposed  to  con- 
sider well  before  saying,  and  to  say  in  such  terms  and  phrases  as  to  signify 
much,  but  heat  little.  The  temper  of  the  British  nation  at  this  very  time 
was  highly  offended  at  the  policy  of  Russia,  and  the  public  voice  was  crying 
out  for  decisive  action  and  war. 

Great  Britain  in  going  to  war  with  Russia  put  herself  into  a  remark- 
able relation.  Czar  Nicholas  was  not  unpopular  in  western  Europe — unless 
in  France.  He  had  married  the  Princess  Charlotte  of  Prussia,  eldest  daugh- 
ter of  Frederick  William  III.  Nicholas  was  a  temperate  and  frugal  auto- 
crat, working  from  fourteen  to  sixteen  hours  daily.  He  was  a  Christian 
czar,  and  in  this  respect  was  at  least  as  near  to  the  sympathies  of  Great 
Britain  as  was  Napoleon  III.  Moreover,  in  going  to  war  with  Russia,  Eng- 
land had  to  ally  herself  with  the  Sultan  Abdul-Medjid,  of  whom  it  might  be 
said  there  was  nothino-  in  him  to  be  desired.  His  grovernment  was  one  of 
the  most  corrupt  and  wicked  imaginable.  He  was  at  the  head  of  the  Mus- 
sulman faith,  and  was  the  front  of  that  offending  In  both  Europe  and  Asia. 
The  existence  of  such  a  power  and  such  a  ruler  In  Europe  required — as  it 
has  ever  since  required — both  apology  and  explanation.  That  Great 
Britain  could  be  in  alliance  with  a  creature  such  as  the  porte  seemed  incred- 
ible enough  ;  but  the  Eastern  Question  required  just  such  bedfellows.  Eng- 
land was  in  the  attitude  of  supporting  the  cause  of  a  thing  without  support- 
ing the  thing  of  the  cause  ! 

For  a  while,  however,  there  was  no  further  declaration  of  w^ar  than  that 
of  Turkey.     It  was  a  little  more  than  a  year,  namely,  on  the  ist  of  Novem- 


222  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

ber,  1853,  that  Nicholas  answered  with  a  manifesto  the  challenge  of  the 
porte.  He  declared  in  a  paper  to  his  people  that  the  blindness  and  the 
obstinacy  of  the  Ottoman  empire  obliged  him  to  take  up  arms.  Just  after- 
ward a  paper  called  "The  Vienna  Note"  was  prepared  by  the  powers  and 
sent  to  both  Russia  and  Turkey  as  a  proposed  basis  of  settlement.  It  was 
accepted  by  the  former  country,  but  rejected  by  the  latter.  Hereupon 
another  note  was  prepared,  which  in  its  turn  was  rejected  by  the  czar. 
This  furnished  the  final  offense,  and  on  the  28th  of  March,  1854,  England 
declared  war.  Matters  had  gone  so  far  and  the  public  mind  was  so  greatly 
inflamed  that  only  a  few  voices  were  lifted  against  the  declaration. 

Already  the  allied  fleets  had  entered  the  Black  Sea.  On  that  water 
had  occurred,  on  the  30th  of  November  previously,  the  battle  of  Sinope 
between  the  Turks  and  the  Russians.  A  Russian  fleet  hovering  about 
Sinope  provoked  the  Turks,  who  sailed  out  to  the  trial  and  were  over- 
whelmed. Their  squadron  was  annihilated.  About  four  thousand  of  the 
Turks  were  reduced  by  slaughter  to  as  many  hundreds,  and  it  was  said  that 
not  a  single  Ottoman  of  those  engaged  escaped  without  a  wound.  The 
Russians  after  their  victory  on  the  water  proceeded  to  bombard  and  destroy 
•Sinope.  The  news  of  this  fight  was  carried  to  western  Europe,  and  pro- 
duced a  fever  of  excitement.  The  reports  of  the  conflict  were  exaggerated 
by  the  correspondents  and  messengers  into  the  phrase  "  Massacre  of  Sinope," 
by  which  the  battle  was  ever  afterward  designated. 

It  cannot  be  denied  that  at  this  juncture  Napoleon  III  made  a  praise- 
worthy effort  to  verify  his  motto,  "  the  empire  is  peace."  On  the  29th  of 
January,  1854,  he  wrote  a  dignified  and  conciliatory  letter  to  Czar  Nicholas, 
as  follows  :  "  Your  majesty  has  given  so  many  proofs  of  your  solicitude  for 
the  tranquillity  of  Europe,  and  by  your  beneficent  influence  has  so  power- 
fully arrested  the  spirit  of  disorder,  that  I  cannot  doubt  as  to  the  course  you 
will  take  in  the  alternative  which  presents  itself  to  your  choice.  Should 
your  majesty  be  as  desirous  as  myself  of  a  pacific  conclusion,  what  would  be 
more  simple  than  to  declare  that  an  armistice  shall  now  be  signed,  that  all 
hostilities  shall  cease,  and  that  the  belligerent  forces  shall  retire  from  the 
places  to  which  motives  of  war  have  led  them  }  Thus  the  Russian  troops 
would  abandon  the  principalities,  and  our  squadrons  the  Black  Sea.  Your 
majesty,  preferring  to  treat  directly  with  Turkey,  might  appoint  an  ambassa- 
dor who  could  negotiate  with  the  plenipotentiary  of  the  sultan  a  convention, 
which  might  be  submitted  to  a  conference  of  the  four  powers.  Let  your 
majesty  adopt  this  plan,  upon  which  the  Queen  of  England  and  myself  are 
perfectly  agreed,  and  tranquillity  will  be  reestablished  and  the  world  satis- 
fied. There  is  nothing  in  the  plan  which  is  unworthy  of  your  majesty, 
nothing  which  can  wound  your  honor;  but  if,  from  motives  difficult  to  under- 
stand, your  majesty   should   refuse   this   proposal,  then    France   as  well   as 


FRENCH    ALLIANCE    AND    CRIMEAN    WAR.  223 

England  will  be  compelled  to  leave  to  the  fate  of  arms  and  the  chance  of 
war  that  which  might  now  be  decided  by  reason  and  justice." 

To  this  the  czar  replied  ten  days  afterward  that  he  had  done  as  much 
for  the  maintenance  of  peace  as  was  compatible  with  his  honor  ;  that  he  was 
the  guardian  of  the  Greek  Christians  in  Turkey  ;  that  the  porte  had  been 
overborne  by  evil  influences;  that  his  confidence  was  in  God  and  the  right. 
Then  he  added,  "  Russia,  as  I  can  guarantee,  will  prove  herself  in  1854  what 
she  was  in  181 2."  The  response,  as  a  whole,  was  not  calculated  to  mend 
matters  in  the  least,  and  the  phrase  about  181 2  was  manifestly  a  defi,  if  not 
an  insult.  The  French  so  regarded  it,  and  the  war  craze  in  France  became 
as  feverish  as  it  was  already  in  Great  Britain.  The  French  ambassador  at 
St.  Petersburg  left  that  capital  and  sent  to  his  master  this  dispatch  :  "  I 
return  with  refusal." 

In  England  the  Aberdeen  ministry  was  loath  in  the  extreme  to  go  to 
war.  Lord  Aberdeen  was  himself  of  a  conservative  and  peaceable  disposi- 
tion. He  was  in  sympathy  with  the  Peace  Society  of  the  kingdom.  That 
society  sent  a  committee  to  St.  Petersburg,  in  the  hope  of  stemming  the  tide 
and  preventing  hostilities.  Mr.  Gladstone  was  almost  as  anxious  as  was  the 
premier  to  avoid  war.  He,  too,  was  by  nature  strongly  inclined  to  peace. 
As  chancellor  of  the  exchequer  and  a  man  of  business  by  the  whole 
course  of  his  life,  he  must  needs  contemplate  with  aversion  the  horrible 
expenditure  as  well  as  the  havoc  of  war.  He  saw  in  such  an  event  a  great 
increase  in  the  burdens  which  must  be  borne  by  the  people  of  Great 
Britain.  He  saw  the  probable  ruin  of  the  financial  scheme  which  he  had 
proposed  two  years  before,  and  which  had  been  adopted  as  the  policy  of 
the  kingdom.  That  scheme  was  intended  for  peace.  Or,  if  it  looked  to 
war  at  all,  it  merely  provided  for  the  remote  contingency  of  it.  Kinglake, 
the  historian  of  the  Crimean  w^ar,  has  fully  described  the  Gladstonian 
sentiment  and  character  at  this  time  :    ■ 

"  If  he  [Gladstone]  was  famous  for  the  splendor  of  his  eloquence,  for 
his  unaffected  piety,  and  for  his  blameless  life,  he  was  celebrated  far  and 
wide  for  a  more  than  common  liveliness  of  conscience.  He  had  once 
imagined  it  to  be  his  duty  to  quit  a  government  and  to  burst  through 
strong  ties  of  friendship  and  gratitude  by  reason  of  a  thin  shade  of 
difference  on  the  subject  of  white  or  brown  sugar.  It  was  believed  that  if 
he  were  to  commit  even  a  little  sin,  or  to  imagine  an  evil  thought,  he  would 
instantly  arraign  himself  before  the  dread  tribunal  which  awaited  him 
within  his  own  bosom  ;  and  that,  his  intellect  being  subtle  and  microscopic, 
and  delighting  in  casuistry  and  exaggeration,  he  would  be  likely  to  give  his 
soul  a  very  harsh  trial  and  treat  himself  as  a  great  criminal  for  faults  too 
minute  to  be  visible  to  the  naked  eyes  of  laymen.  His  friends  lived  in 
dread  of  his  virtues  as  tending  to  make  him  whimsical  and  unstable,  and 


224 


LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 


the  practical  politicians,  perceiving  that  he  was  not  to  be  depended  upon 
for  party  purposes,  and  was  bent  upon  none  but  lofty  objects,  used  to  look 
upon  him  as  dangerous — used  to  call  him  behind  his  back  a  good  man,  a 
cfood  man  in  the  worst  sense  of  the  term." 

In  any  event,  it  remained  for  Gladstone  to  provide  for  the  financial 
affairs  of  Great  Britain  at  the  outbreak  of  the  Crimean  War  and  daring 
a  considerable  section  of  that  conflict.  His  duties  were  onerous.  The 
statesman  and  financier  justified  himself  in  supporting  the  government,  in 
defending  the   war,  in  doing  his    best  to  furnish  the    means    requisite   for 

its  prosecution,  on  the  ground  that  it 
was  a  defensive  war,  undertaken  by  Eng- 
land in  the  interest  of  universal  peace, 
against  the  aggressions  of  Russia.  How- 
ever much  he  may  have  deplored  the 
fact  of  war,  he  nevertheless  accepted  it 
as  necessary  to  the  honor  of  his  country. 
The  principal  events  in  the  progress 
of  that  struggle  may  here  be  briefly 
summarized  : 

The  allied  powers  sent  with  all 
expedition  an  army  of  sixty-five  thousand 
men,  with  five  thousand  horse  and  eighty 
pieces  of  artillery,  to  the  Black  Sea. 
The  expedition  reached  its  destination 
on  the  14th  of  September,  1854.  In  a 
short  time  the  allies — English,  French, 
Turks — concentrated  at  Varna,  from  which  place  a  descent  on  the  Russians 
in  the  Crimean  peninsula  was  contemplated.  Already  the  Turks  in  Europe 
had  made  considerable  headway  against  the  enemy.  It  was  at  this  juncture 
that  Omar  Pasha  appeared  as  the  leader  and  hero  of  the  Ottoman  forces. 

The  Russians  were  under  command  of  Prince  Menshikoff,  the  English 
under  Lord  Raelan,  and  the  French  under  Marshal  Pelissier.     On  the  20th 

o 

of  September,  1854,  a  bloody  battle  was  fought  on  the  river  Alma.  Here 
the  Russians  were  defeated,  and  were  compelled  to  fall  back  in  the  direction 
of  their  strong  fortress,  Sebastopol,  at  the  southeastern  extremity  of  the 
peninsula.  Here  the  war  was  focused.  The  Russians  were  strongly  rein- 
forced late  in  the  autumn,  and  Menshikoff  united  his  divisions  behind  the 
works  of  Sebastopol.  On  the  25th  of  September  the  heights  of  Balaklava, 
south  of  the  Russian  position,  were  seized  by  the  British  under  Lord  Raglan, 
and  on  the  9th  of  October  the  siege  of  Sebastopol  was  begun. 

For  nearly  eleven  months  the  allies  held  that  strong  fortress  in  their 
grip.     They  succeeded  before  winter  in  bringing  their  batteries  to  bear  on 


FIELD    MARSHAL    LORD    RAGLAN. 

(Commander  in  Chief  of  the  British  Army  ia 

the  Crimea.) 


FRENCH    ALLIANCE    AND    CRIMEAN    WAR. 


225 


the  town  ;  but  the  Russians  for  their  part  succeeded  in  blockading  with 
sunken  vessels  and  other  obstructions  the  entrance  to  the  harbor.  The 
siege  that  ensued  was  one  of  the  most  remarkable  in  history.  The  Russians 
made  two  tremendous  sallies,  the  first  on  the  night  of  the  25th  of  October, 
at  Balaklava.  This  place  was  held  by  a  combined  force  of  Turks  and 
English.  The  former  gave  way  from  four  redoubts,  which  were  carried  by 
the  assailants;  but  at  the  crisis  of  the  battle  the  British  Highlanders  came 


MARSHAL    PELISSIER. 
(Commander  in  Chief  of  the  French  Army  in  the  Crimea.) 

into   action,  and    the    Russians  were  driven    back.     It   was  here  that   the 
charge  of  the  Lieht  Brigade  occurred,  memorable  in  song  and  story. 

The  other  sortie  of  the  Russians  was  against  the  village  of  Inkerman, 
at  the  head  of  the  harbor.  This  occurred  on  the  5th  of  November,  1854. 
A  strong  force  of  Russians  descended  from  the  high  grounds  which  they 
occupied,  and  were  confronted  by  the  allies  on  the  slope  opposite,  near  the 
ruins  of  an  ancient  town  mentioned  by  Strabo.  Here  the  Russian  attack 
fell  with  ereat  violence  on  the  Encrlish  and  French  ;  but  the  latter  were 
IS 


226 


LIFE    A\n    TTMF.S    OF    WILT.TAM     F.    GI.ADSTnvF. 


FRENCH    ALLIANCE    AND    CRIMEAN    WAR.  22  7 

victorious.  Many  like  movements  of  a  minor  character  occurred  in  the 
beeinnino-  of  winter,  and  then  the  riijor  of  the  season  fell  on  the  combatants. 
In  the  month  of  January  came  such  cruel  privations  and  sufferings  as  have 
rarely  been  borne  by  soldiers  in  modern  times.  Hunger,  disease,  and  cold 
did  their  worst  on  the  allied  camos.  The  orenius  of  Elizabeth  Butler  has 
seized  upon  the  morning  "  Roll  Call  "  in  the  Crimean  snows  to  depict  the 
excess  of  human  suftering  and  devotion  to  duty. 

Before  the  winter  was  passed  the  allied  lines  around  Sebastopol  were 
considerably  contracted.  On  the  23d  of  February  the  French  assailed  with 
great  valor  the  stronghold  called  the  Malakhoff,  but  were  repulsed.  On 
the  1 8th  of  the  following  June,  being  the  fortieth  anniversary  of  Waterloo, 
the  assault  was  desperately  renewed,  but  without  success.  On  the  i6th  of 
August  was  fought  the  bloody  battle  of  Tchernaya,  being  the  last  effort  of 
the  Russians  to  raise  the  siege.  With  a  force  of  fifty-six  thousand  men 
they  threw  themselves  against  the  allied  position,  but  could  not  break 
through. 

All  the  while  the  trenches  of  the  allies  were  drawn  nearer  and  nearer 
to  the  Russian  defenses.  On  the  5th  of  September  a  terrible  cannonade 
was  opened,  and  when  this  had  lasted 'three  days  both  English  and  French 
sprang  from  their  intrenchments  and  carried,  the  one  the  Redan  and  the 
other  the  Malakhoff,  by  storm.  The  losses  of  the  combatants  were 
immense.  The  Russians  blew  up  their  fortifications  on  the  south  side  of 
the  harbor  and  retreated  across  the  bay.  The  victors  destroyed  the  docks, 
arsenals,  and  shipyards  of  Sebastopol,  going  as  far  as  they  could  toward 
making  impossible  the  future  occupancy  of  the  place  by  the  Russians  as  a 
seat  of  commerce  and  war. 

By  this  great  success  of  the  allies  a  permanent  check  was  given  to 
the  ambition  of  Czar  Nicholas.  The  Russian  empire  was  reined  back  on 
its  haunches  by  the  hands  of  France  and  England  out  of  the  West.  On 
the  2d  of  March,  1S55,  ^^^^  ^^^^  died,  as  was  believed,  of  disappointment 
and  a  broken  heart.  The  allies  went  on  to  capture  Kertch,  at  the  entrance 
to  the  Sea  of  Azov,  which  they  effected  on  the  25th  of  May.  Soon  after- 
ward hostilities  ceased  and  the  epoch  of  negotiation  followed.  Commis- 
sioners met  at  Paris,  and  on  the  30th  of  March,  1S56,  a  treaty  was 
concluded,  called  the  Treaty  of  Paris,  to  which  Russia  was  obliged  to  give 
her  reluctant  consent. 

The  greater  part  of  these  events  were  accomplished,  so  far  as  England 
was  concerned,  under  the  auspices  of  the  Aberdeen  ministry.  However 
reluctantly  that  government  had  gone  into  the  war  it  nevertheless  rallied 
in  the  English  manner  to  prosecute  the  conflict  to  a  successful  termination. 
There  was  in  the  kingdom  a  remainingf  sentiment  against  the  war,  and  ever 
favorable   to   its   cessation.     It   is    in   evidence   that   the   chancellor  of  the 


228 


LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 


exchequer  was  hard  pressed  in  his  feelings  between  the  conflict  of  duty  and 
sentiment.  To  him  remained  the  painful  part  of  abandoning  the  tax 
scheme  which  he  had  prepared  with  so  much  care  on  entering  upon  his 
office  and  of  preparing  another  to  meet  the  exigencies  of  war.  He  was 
obliged  to  extend  his  rates  to  incomes  and  spirits  and  malt.  He  was 
also  obliged  to  consume  the  more  than  million  pounds  of  surplus  which  he 
had  provided.  It  had  been  his  intention  to  grant  release  from  taxation,  and 
instead    of   this   he   must   greatly  increase    it.      This  would   necessarily  be 


THE    FALL    OF    SEBASTOPOL — CAPTURE   OF    THE    MALAKHOFF    TOWER. 

followed  with  popular  discontent  and   complainings.     He  had  expected  to 
remit  the  duty  on  sugar  ;  but  this  pleasing  measure  had  to  be  abandoned. 

At  this  juncture  Gladstone  and  Disraeli  were  again  brought  into  con- 
flict. The  former  conceived  the  plan  of  providing  the  extraordinary 
expenses  of  the  war  from  the  current  revenues  of  the  kingdom.  He  thought 
this  might  be  done  by  increasing  the  tax  rates  so  as  to  secure  ten  millions 
sterling  .above  the  usual  expenditure.  This  he  boldly  proposed.  The 
measure  was  approved  by  Prince  Albert,  and  the  people  at  large 
responded  favorably  to  the  plan.  In  opposition  to  this  Mr.  Disraeli  pro- 
posed to  bo7'i'ow,  and  to  increase  the  national  debt  by  as  much  as  might  be 
required. 


FRENCH    ALLIANCE    AND    CRIMEAN    WAR.  229 

The  issue  was  sharply  drawn.  The  pubhc  opinion  was  so  strongly  with 
the  chancellor  that  he  went  forward  to  propose  on  the  plan  indicated  his 
war  budget  of  1854.  He  was  able  to  report  a  surplus  of  more  than  a 
million  pounds  from  the  previous  year.  In  addition  to  this  he  could  show 
that  the  expenditures  were  by  more  than  another  million  less  than  had  been 
estimated.  This  gave  the  chancellor  over  two  million  pounds  to  begin 
with.  He  accordingly,  on  the  6th  of  March,  1854,  brought  forward  the 
budget,  in  which  he  proposed  a  vote  of  a  million  and  a  quarter  pounds  for 
the  extraordinary  military  expenditures  of  the  year.  He  strongly  defended 
the  policy  of  paying  as  fast  as  expenditure  was  necessary.  He  opposed 
with  all  his  might  the  increase  of  the  national  debt,  holding  that  future 
generations  should  not  be  mortgaged  to  the  present.  It  was  the  present 
that  made  war  in  the  interest  of  England  and  of  civilization ;  let  the 
present,  therefore,  demonstrate  its  patriotism  by  paying  as  it  went  the  nec- 
essary expense  of  the  conflict.  Nor  may  we  pass  from  this  episode  in  the 
career  of  Gladstone  without  emphasizing  it  as  the  most  important  feature 
of  all  the  financial  policies  that  he  ever  proposed. 

The  theory  of  making  the  war  period  pay  its  own  way  is  one  of 
universal  application.  No  nation  is  ready  to  engage  in  war  or  ought  to 
engage  in  it,  except  in  extreme  cases,  unless  it  is  ready  also  to  pay.  The 
Gladstonian  policy  dominated  the  financial  management  of  Great  Britain 
during  the  Crimean  War,  and  to  that  circumstance  the  kingdom  was 
indebted  for  the  inconsiderable  increase  in  the  national  indebtedness  on  the 
score  of  the  expensive  and  distressing  contest  which  she  was  obliged  to 
wage  with  a  powerful  enemy  in  Asia. 

Gladstone  had  to  face  a  deficit  for  the  current  year  (1853-54)  of 
nearly  three  million  pounds — this  in  addition  to  the  surplus  which  had 
accumulated.  To  meet  this  large  demand  and  to  provide  for  the  ensuing 
year  he  placed  himself  stubbornly  on  the  ground  of  raising  the  revenue 
by  a  sum  equivalent  to  that  demanded,  and  to  do  it  witJiiii  the  year.  He 
would  not  resort  to  a  loan.  He  boldly  declared  that  England,  more  than 
any  other  country,  had  resorted  to  the  dangerous  expedient  of  laying 
mortgages  on  the  industries  and  enterprises  of  future  generations.  He 
declared  with  equal  boldness  that  a  nation  ready  to  go  to  war  ought 
to  be  ready  to  make  the  sacrifices  necessary  to  support  it.  He  held 
that  this  policy,  if  rigorously  adhered  to,  would  bridle  the  spirit  of  war 
and  reduce  that  monster's  devastations  to  a  minimum.  He  called  attention 
of  Parliament  to  the  fact  that  England  had  entered  on  the  great  struggle 
under  favorable  circumstances.  He  praised  the  House  for  the  noble 
efforts  already  made  in  support  of  the  treasury.  He  called  attention  to 
the  fact  that  the  military  establishment  had  been  increased  by  forty 
thousand  men,  and  urged  this  circumstance  as  a  proof  that  rhe  government 


230  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

was  prosecuting  the  war  against  Russia  with  decision  in  council  and  vigor 
in  the  field. 

The  sentiment  of  Europe — all  Europe — was,  said  the  speaker,  with 
England  in  this  emergency.  Everything  seemed  to  indicate  a  prosperous 
conclusion  of  the  war  at  an  early  date.  It  was  the  duty  of  the  House  of 
Commons  to  adhere  strictly  to  the  rule  of  making  each  year  raise  its  own 
supplies.  Finally  the  chancellor  laid  before  Parliament  his  actual  estimates 
for  1854-55,  placing  the  income  at  a  little  more  and  the  expenditure  at  a 
little  less  than  fifty-six  and  a  half  million  pounds.  To  all  this  he  added  a 
recommendation  relative  to  the  equal  taxation  of  domestic  and  foreign  bills 
of  exchange. 

The  discussions  which  followed  the  presentation  of  the  budget  were 
nearly  all  favorable  thereto.  It  was  noted  that  Mr.  Disraeli's  opposition  at 
the  outset  on  the  motion  to  consider,  and  his  proposal  to  borrow  funds  and 
increase  the  national  debt,  had  been  ms^d^  pi^o  forma  rather  than  with  inten- 
tion seriously  to  obstruct  the  ministry.  That  statesman,  after  Gladstone 
had  concluded,  addressed  the  House,  stating  that  her  majesty's  opposition 
was  bound,  notwithstanding  any  divergence  of  views  from  those  upon  which 
the  budget  was  founded,  to  support  the  measure  as  a  whole,  since  it  was 
necessary  to  prosecute  the  war.  He  entered  a  protest,  however,  that  in  case 
the  war  should  be  long  continued  it  could  not  be  conceded  that  the  requisite 
supplies  should  be  raised  year  by  year  by  taxation.  So  on  the  20th  of 
March,  1854,  the  budget  came  to  a  vote  and  was  carried  without  a  division 
of  the  House.  This  included  the  proposition  to  double  the  income  tax  for 
the  ensuing  3'ear. 

Hereupon  Lord  Willoughby  offered  an  amendment  suspending  the 
increased  rate  for  the  first  half  of  the  year  following.  The  debate  broke  out 
anew,  and  Disraeli  made  a  spirited  and  effective  speech,  marked  with  his 
usual  wit,  sarcasm,  and  casuistry.  He  concluded  with  the  assertion  that  the 
ministry  was  not  a  unit,  and  had  not  been  a  unit,  either  in  declaring  the  war 
or  in  prosecuting  it.  The  ministry  was  rightly  designated  as  a  coalition 
ministry,  and  the  war  was  therefore  a  coalition  luar!  This  spirited  sally,, 
however,  did  not  avail.  Gladstone  replied  with  great  vigor  and  success. 
He  challenged  the  opposition  to  propose  a  vote  of  w^ant  of  confidence.  The 
sentiment  of  the  House  was  so  strongly  wnth  the  chancellor  that  the  Wil- 
loughby amendment  was  rejected  by  a  large  majority,  and  on  the  30th  of 
March  the  bill  as  a  whole  was  passed. 

This  highly  successful  and  radical  expedient  of  the  chancellor  of  the 
exchequer  met  the  expectation  of  its  projector,  but  the  enlarging  proportions 
of  the  war  soon  demanded  additional  outlays.  Already  before  the  adoption 
of  the  budget  an  army  of  twenty-five  thousand  men  had  been  sent  forward 
by  the  Duke  of  Newcastle  to  the  Crimea,  and  this  was  followed  by  other 


FRENCH    ALLIANCE    AND    CRIMEAN    WAR. 


231 


je^ 


1.  Before  hLbA=.ioi'uL.     TUc  Redan,  from  the  Old  Advanced  Trench,  July  14,  1855. 

2.  The  Battle  of  the  Tchernaya.     The  Attack  upon  the  Sardinian  Picket,  September  5,  1S55. 

3.  The  Valley  of  Death.     Before  Sebastopol,  June  3,  1855. 


-o- 


LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 


divisions  to  the  same  field.  The  war  was  undertaken  in  dead  earnest.  Mr. 
Gladstone  on  the  8th  of  May  found  himself  under  necessity  of  presenting  a 
supplemental  budget,  wherein  he  proposed  to  raise  an  addition  of  nearly 
seven  million  pounds  to  meet  the  extraordinary  expenses  of  the  war. 
He  went  at  the  question  boldly,  but  with  his  usual  circumspection  and 
prudence.  He  declared  himself  unwilling  to  increase  the  income  taxes 
further,  and  also  unwilling  to  alter  the  postal  system  with  a  view  to  increas- 
ing revenue.  It  had  become  rtecessary,  so  the  speaker  urged,  to  lay  duties 
on  articles  of  consumption  and  manufacture. 

The  articles  on  which  he  would  recommend  additional  taxation  were 
spirits,  sugar,  and  malt.  He  proposed  as  the  principal  item  in  the  increase  a 
duty  of  four  shillings  the  bushel  on  malt.  He  estimated  the  consumption  of 
that  commodity  at  forty  million  bushels,  which  under  his  proposal  would 
yield  nearly  two  and  a  half  millions.  He  would  increase  the  duties  on 
Scotch  and  Irish  spirits,  in  the  former  country  by  one  shilling  and  in  the 
latter  by  eightpence  the  gallon.  From  this  source  he  would  derive  four 
hundred  and  fifty  thousand  pounds.  From  the  increase  of  the  sugar  duties 
he  thought  that  seven  hundred  thousand  pounds  might  be  derived.  He 
urged  that  there  should  be  no  delay  in  granting  the  additional  levies.  The 
fact  of  his  asking  for  them  could  not  be  adduced  as  evidence  of  a  want  of 
foresight  relative  to  the  expenses  of  the  war.  He  defended  his  propositions 
each  and  several,  and  stood  strongly  to  his  position  against  borrowing  and 
increasing  the  national  debt.  He  quoted  from  Pitt  the  warning  which  that 
statesman  had  uttered  on  the  score  of  national  loans.  If  Great  Britain 
would  stand  stoutly  to  the  principle  of  making  the  annual  revenues  equal  to 
the  expenditures,  then  the  vigor  of  the  English  race  in  commerce,  manufac- 
tures, and  productive  industries  would  be  sufficient  to  meet  even  the  enor- 
mous outlays  of  a  war  in  Asia. 

The  event  showed  that  Parliament  was  not  expecting  so  bold  and 
withal  so  radical  a  measure  of  financial  policy.  The  debates  were  spirited. 
There  was  an  effort  to  defer  the  second  reading  of  the  bill.  Several  dis- 
tinguished parliamentarians  strongly  opposed  the  chancellor's  measures. 
The  cautious  Disraeli,  affirming  all  the  while  that  he  was  in  favor  of  a  vig- 
orous prosecution  of  the  war,  nevertheless  opposed  the  tax  on  malt  as  a 
thinor  ruinous  to  one  of  the  leadinor  industries  of  Great  Britain.  It  was  a 
measure,  said  he,  directed  against  agriculture,  and  could  not  be  borne.  Nev- 
ertheless the  House  supported  the  proposition  of  the  chancellor  by  a 
majority  of  more  than  a  hundred  votes. 

After  this  the  principal  debate  of  the  session  was  on  a  proposition  to 
make  a  temporary  loan  of  six  million  pounds.  It  was  necessary  for  the  gov- 
ernment to  have  an  abundance  of  ready  funds  in  advance  of  the  revenues 
which  had  just  been  provided.     It  was  already  in  July  before  this  question 


FRENCH    ALLIANCE    AND    CRIMEAN    WAR.  2T,;^ 

-came  to  a  vote  in  the  House.  There  was  much  acrimonious  discussion,  in 
which  Disraeh  participated  with  his  wonted  brilHancy  of  attack.  Lord  John 
Russell  strongly  supported  the  government,  but  the  principal  defense  of  the 
ministerial  policy  was  left  to  Gladstone  himself.  In  a  perfectly  equable 
temper  he  took  up  the  charges  against  the  management  of  the  war  and  the 
objections  against  the  war  itself,  and  showed  the  falsity  of  the  one  and  the 
hollowness  of  the  other.  The  event  demonstrated  the  stronsf  hold  which 
the  chancellor  of  a  coalition  ministry  might  have  on  the  nation  at  large. 
Again  his  policy  was  approved  by  a  majority  of  more  than  a  hundred,  and 
on  the  1 2th  of  August,  1854,  Parliament  was  prorogued. 


234  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 


CHAPTER   XV. 

Accession  of  Palmerston  and  Treaty  of  Paris. 

E  have  already  seen  and  niarked  the  course  of  events  in  the 
East,  thus  forerunning-  somewhat  that  part  of  the  drama  in 
Great  Britain  in  which  Mr.  Gladstone  was  one  of  the  principal 
actors.  We  should  here  remark  that  the  peace  party  in  Eng- 
land, though  only  a  small  minority,  prosecuted  its  views  with 
great  activity,  John  Bright  was  at  the  head  of  those  who  were  willing  to 
avoid  war,  or  to  cause  the  cessation  of  war  at  almost  any  hazard.  Nor 
may  we  deny  that  there  was  a  certain  cogency  in  the  argument  of  the 
peace  advocates.  They  were  able  to  point  out  the  monstrous  character  of 
an  alliance  between  Great  Britain  and  Turkey ;  between  progress  and 
inertia  ;  between  enlightenment  and  darkness  ;  between  Protestantism  and 
Islam.  They  were  also  able  to  show  that  Russia,  in  addition  to  being  a 
Christian  nation,  was  a  nation  tending  strongly  to  progress  and  enlighten- 
ment. How,  therefore,  could  Great  Britain  prefer  the  Ottoman  to  the  Mus- 
covite }     How  could  she  join  the  former  in  making  war  on  the  latter  ? 

These  arguments,  however,  could  not  avail.  The  peace  commission 
that  went  to  St.  Petersburg  had  found  there  an  angry  and  irreconcilable  czar. 
The  hostile  elements  were  loose,  and  a  petition  for  peace  could  not  be  heard 
until  the  powers  had  expended  their  animosity  in  violence  and  blood. 

We  are  here  to  note  the  decadence  and  final  disruption  of  the  Aber- 
deen ministry.  That  ministry,  as  the  reader  knows,  was  a  coalition  of  many 
elements.  It  was  such  a  combination  of  forces  as  might  well  endure  the 
trials  and  controversies  of  peace,  but  could  hardly  bear  the  strain  of  war. 
All  aloncr  Lord  Aberdeen  was  accused  of  lukewarmness  in  England's  cause 
against  Russia.  None  could  doubt  his  loyalty  and  devotion,  but  he  was  at 
heart  a  man  of  peaceable  disposition,  and  that  did  not  well  accord  with  the 
temper  of  England  militant.  The  opponents  of  the  ministry  were  able  to 
mark  the  discordant  parts  of  the  ministerial  body  and  to  emphasize  and 
exaggerate  its  disagreements. 

There,  for  instance,  were  the  Peelites,  of  whom  Gladstone  was  one,  who 
were  accused  of  being  in  the  government  for  expediency,  and  of  having  no 
actual  sympathy  WMth  their  colleagues.  Besides,  there  were  at  least  two 
members  of  the  ministry  who  aspired  almost  openly  to  the  leadership  which 
was  held  by  the  moderate  Aberdeen.  These  two  were  Lord  Palmerston 
and  Lord  John  Russell.  These  bold  and  aggressive  spirits  had  a  strong 
following,  both  in  the  cabinet  and  out  of  it.  The  temper  of  Lord  Palmer- 
ston in  particular  was  almost  the  exact  expression  of  the  belligerent  temper 
of  Great  Britain.     When  he  spoke   England  spoke  more  truly  than  in   the 


ACCESSION    OF    PALMERSTON    AND    TREATY    OF    PARIS. 


235 


JOHN    BRIGHT. 


Private  enterprise  was  sum- 


lutterance  of  any  other.     These  disagreements   did   not  proceed  as   far  as 

•  downright  quarreling  and  dissensions  in  the  government,  but  they  were  a 
weakness  and  source  of  anxiety  to  all  typ- 
ical   Englishmen,   from   the   queen  to  the 
Cornish  miner. 

To  this  was  added  a  circumstance  or 
two  of  popular  discontent  having  a  deep 
foundation  in  fact.  The  condition  of  the 
British  army  in  the  Crimea  after  the  bat- 

;tles  of  Balaklava  and  Inkerman  was  de- 
plorable.    Authentic    information    of   the 

-state  of  the  troops,  of  their  suffering  in 
camp  and  hospital,  was  borne  back  to  the 
mother  country,  and  produced  a  furor  of 
sympathies  and  not  a  little  denunciation 
of  the  military  authorities.  In  this  denun- 
ciation General  Fitzroy  Somerset,  com- 
mander in  chief,  better  known  by  his  title 

■  of  Lord  Raglan,  came  in  for  a  large  share, 
moned  to  provide  for  the  men  in  the  field. 

It  was  at  this  juncture  that  Florence  Nightingale,  Angel  of  the  Bivouac 

;and  Hospital,  with  thirty-seven  assistants,  set  out  for  the  Crimea,  where  they 
fortunately  arrived  in  time  to  minister  to  the  sick  and  wounded  after  Bala- 
klava. Another  contingent  of  fifty  nurses  was  sent  soon  afterward,  and 
private  subscriptions  of  many  thousands  of  pounds  were  made  to  back  up 
the  humane  work  of  the  heroic  British  women.  Queen  Victoria  found 
occasion  to  write  in  mingled  grief  and  reproof  to  Lord  Raglan,  saying: 
*•  The  sad  privations  of  the  army,  the  bad  weather,  and  the  constant  sickness 
are  causes  of  the  deepest  concern  to  the  queen  and  prince.  The  braver  our 
noble  troops  are,  the  more  patiently  and  heroically  they  bear  all  their  trials 
and  sufferings,  the  more  miserable  we  feel  at  their  long  continuance.  The 
queen  trusts  that  Lord  Raglan  will  be  very  strict  in  seeing  that  no  unneces- 
sary privations  are  incurred  by  any  negligence  of  those  whose  duty  it  is  to 
watch  over  their  wants.  The  queen  earnestly  trusts  that  the  large  amount 
of  warm  clothing  sent  out  has  not  only  reached  Balaklava,  but  has  been  dis- 
tributed, and  that  Lord  Raglan  has  been  successful  in  procuring  means  of 
huttine  for  the  men.  Lord  Rao-Ian  cannot  think  how  much  we  suffer  for 
the  army,  and  how  painfully  anxious  we  are  to  know  that  their  privations 

.are  decreasing." 

This  condition  of  affairs  produced  great  excitement  and  much  bitter- 
ness in  Parliament  and  throughout  the  country.     An  attack  was  made  on 

.the  government  of  Lord  Aberdeen  all  along  the  line.     Denunciations  were 


236 


LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 


heard  in  both  the  Commons  and  the  House  of  Lords.  Lord  Palmerston,  the 
home  secretary,  could  not  and  would  not  restrain  himself.  It  became 
evident  to  all  that  he  more  truly  represented  the  sentiment  of  England  than 
any  other  personage  in  the  cabinet,  from  the  premier  to  the  last  secretary. 
Day  by  day  he  grew  in  popular  favor.  True,  he  had  just  at  this  time 
offended  with  his  radicalism  the  staid  and  commonplace  orthodoxy  of  the 
realm  by  insisting  that  natural  means,  extending  all  the  way  from  ordinary 
cleanliness  to  the  highest  applications  of  science,  are  better  preservatives  of 
the  public  health  than  fastings  and  prayers.  He  had  made  the  greatest 
ecclesiastics  and  the  greatest  cities  dance  to  his  sanitary  music  in  a  way  to 


MISS   NIGHTINGALE    IN    THE   HOSPITAL    AT    SCUTARI. 


make  the  heads  of  the  fearful  swim.  He  had  said  to  the  Presbytery  of  Edin- 
burgh, asking  that  a  day  of  fasting  and  humiliation  be  appointed  to  stay  the 
approach  of  cholera :  "  Lord  Palmerston  would  therefore  suggest  that 
the  best  course  which  the  people  of  this  country  can  pursue,  to  deserve  that 
the  further  progress  of  the  cholera  should  be  stayed,  will  be  to  employ  the 
interval  that  will  elapse  between  the  present  time  and  the  beginning  of 
next  spring  in  planning  and  executing  measures  by  which  those  portions  of 
their  town  and  which  are  inhabited  by  the  poorest  classes,  and  which,  from 
the  nature  of  things,  most  need  purification  and  improvement,  may  be  freed 
from  those  causes  and  sources  of  contagion  which,  if  allowed  to  remain,  will 


ACCESSION    OF    PALMERSTON    AND    TREATY    OF    PARIS.  237 

infallibly  breed  pestilence  and  be  fruitful  in  death  in  spite  of  all  the  prayers 
and  fastings  of  a  united  but  inactive  nation.  When  man  has  done  his 
utmost  for  his  own  safety  then  is  the  time  to  invoke  the  blessing  of 
Heaven  to  ofive  effect  to  his  exertion." 

To  the  people  of  London  Lord  Palmerston  said  :  "  The  practice  of 
burying  dead  bodies  under  buildings  in  which  living  people  assemble  in 
large  numbers  is  a  barbarous  one,  and  ought  to  be  at  once  and  forever  put  an 
end  to.  .  .  .  And  why,  pray,  should  archbishops  and  bishops  and  deans  and 
canons  be  buried  under  churches,  if  other  people  are  not  to  be  so  }  What 
special  connection  is  there  between  church  dignities  and  the  privilege  of 
being  decomposed  under  the  feet  of  survivors  7  " 

This  way  of  braving  public  odium  and  of  saying  what  all  men  knew 
ought  to  be  said,  but  what  all  other  men  were  afraid  to  say,  was  precisely 
the  method  of  catching  the  confidence  of  the  British  nation.  Palmerston 
proceeded  with  his  lecture  thus:  "  England  is,  I  believe,  the  only  country  in 
which  in  these  days  people  accumulate  putrefying  dead  bodies  amid  the 
dwellings  of  the  living;  and  as  to  burying  bodies  under  thronged  churches, 
you  might  as  well  put  them  under  libraries,  drawing-roorns,  and  dining 
rooms."  This  was  an  open  defiance  to  the  prejudices  of  the  English  race  ; 
but  the  English  race  likes  to  be  defied. 

Meanwhile  news  came  and  came  again  from  the  Crimea  that  was  oil  to 
the  bonfire  in  England.  Lord  Palmerston  urged  the  cabinet  to  press  the 
war  with  all  possible  vigor.  When  that  body  did  not  move  forward  with 
the  decision  which  he  demanded  he  resigned  his  office.  For  the  time  his 
reasons  were  dissembled  or  concealed  ;  but  the  country  came  to  understand 
that  he  had  gone  out  because  he  could  not  sufficiently  impress  his  views  on 
the  ministry.  Public  opinion  was  so  overwhelmingly  for  the  policy  which 
Palmerston  represented  that  he  was  at  once  recalled  to  office,  v/here  he 
became  for  the  greater  part  of  the  year  a  bull  in  the  ministerial  china  shop 
of  Great  Britain. 

To  all  this  must  be  added  the  usual  intrigues  of  British  politics. 
Partyism,  in  the  midst  of  the  public  commotion,  was  as  busy  as  ever.  The 
prince  consort,  writing  to  his  friend.  Baron  Stockmar,  of  the  evil  reputation 
which  had  recently  come  to  him,  said  :  "  One  main  element  is  the  hostility 
and  settled  bitterness  of  the  old  High  Tory  or  Protectionist  party  against 
me  on  account  of  my  friendship  with  the  late  Sir  Robert  Peel,  and  of  my 
success  with  the  exhibition.  .  .  .  Their  fury  knew  no  bounds  when  by 
Palmerston's  return  to  the  ministry  that  party  (which  is  now  at  variance 
with  Disraeli)  lost  the  chance  of  securing  a  leader  in  the  lower  House,  who 
would  have  overthrown  the  ministry  with  the  cry  for  English  honor  and 
independence,  and  against  parliamentary  reform,  which  is  by  no  means 
popular.     Hatred  of  the  Peelites  is  stronger  in  the  old  party  than  ever,  and 


238  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

Aberdeen  is  regarded  as  his  representative.  To  discredit  him  would  have 
this  further  advantage,  that,  if  he  could  be  upset,  the  keystone  of  the  arch 
of  coalition  would  be  smashed,  and  it  must  fall  to  pieces  ;  then  Palmerston 
and  John  Russell  would  have  to  separate,  and  the  former  would  take  the 
place  he  has  long  coveted  of  leader  to  the  Conservatives  and  Radicals. 
For  the  same  reason,  however,  it  must  be  our  interest  to  support  Aberdeen, 
in  order  to  keep  the  structure  standing.  Fresh  reason  for  the  animosity 
toward  us.  So  the  old  game  was  renewed  which  was  played  against 
Melbourne  after  the  queen's  attacking  the  court,  so  as  to  make  it  clear,  both 
to  it  and  to  the  public,  that  a  continuance  of  Aberdeen  in  office  must 
endanger  the  popularity  of  the  crown." 

Whatever  may  have  been  the  merits  of  the  imbroglio  prevailing  in 
England  in  the  after  part  of  1854,  it  is  certain  that  hostility  to  the  existing 
ministry  reached  as  high  as  the  prince  consort  and  the  queen  herself  It 
is  noteworthy  that  the  animosities  of  the  day  found  but  feeble  expression 
against  the  chancellor  of  the  exchequer.  We  here  recite  so  much  of  the 
history  of  the  times  as  will  make  the  line  of  his  personal  and  official  life 
distinct  through  the  obscurities  and  confusion  of  the  stormy  paragraph. 

As  for  the  ministry,  the  year  1854  closed,  and  1855  opened  darkly.  On 
the  reassembling  of  Parliament  the  queen  went  in  person  to  present  her 
address.  She  was  accompanied  by  Prince  Albert.  The  latter  was  almost 
at  the  nadir  of  popular  esteem.  He  was  greatly  calumniated  as  being  more 
European  than  English.  He  had  been  denounced  as  the  chief  agent  of 
"the  Austro-Belgian-Coburg-Orleans  clique,  the  avowed  enemies  of  England 
and  the  subservient  tools  of  Russia."  It  was  proclaimed  that  he  was  in  the 
habit  of  being  present  at  the  interviews  of  the  queen  and  her  ministers,  and 
of  influencing  the  policy  of  the  kingdom  against  its  best  interests.  It  was 
considered  necessary  that  Lord  Aberdeen  and  his  fellow-ministers  should 
reassure  her  majesty  in  someway,  even  before  the  House  of  Commons,  with 
an  effectual  denial  of  the  slanders  which  had  been  promulgated  against  her 
husband  and  herself  The  premier  declared  in  a  letter  to  the  queen  that 
the  conduct  of  the  prince  had  been  invariably  devoted  to  the  public  good, 
and  his  life  perfectly  unattackable.  Lord  Aberdeen  declared  that  there 
was  no  ground  to  apprehend  serious  consequences  from  the  contemptible 
exhibitions  of  malevolence  and  factional  feeling  toward  the  prince  consort. 

Nevertheless  the  ministry  of  the  Earl  of  Aberdeen  fell  rapidly  into 
disruption.  Of  those  who  supported  that  government  only  Lord  John 
Russell  and  Mr.  Gladstone  retained  a  measure  of  public  confidence. 
Against  the  latter  not  much  could  be  urged  in  any  form  ;  for  his  abilities  in 
financial  management  were  as  great  as  his  patriotism,  and  neither  could  be 
gainsaid.  Lord  Palmerston  went  back  into  the  ministry.  The  explanations 
of  his  break  with  his  colleas^ues   were   lame  and  inconsequential.     It  was 


ACCESSION    OF    PALMERSTON    AND    TREATY    OF    PARIS. 


239 


said  officially  that  the  reason  for  his  going  out  was  his  failure  to  agree  to  a 
scheme  of  parliamentary  reform  proposed  by  Lord  John  Russell.  He 
himself  declared  that  he  could  not  take  up  a  bill  which  contained  material 
things  against  his  judgment  and  conscience.  In  a  letter  to  his  brother-in- 
law  he  added  this  postscript :  "  The  Times  s:\ys  there  has  been  no  difference 
In  the  cabinet  about  Eastern  affairs.  This  is  an  untruth,  but  I  felt  it 
would  have  been  silly  to  have  gone  out  because  I  could  not  have  my  own 
way  about  Turkish  affairs,  seeing  that  my  presence  in  the  cabinet  did  good 


^ir  Kdiiiiucd   Lyons.  Sir  Charles  Napier. 

SIR    EDMUND    LYONS,  G.C.B.,  COMMANDING    SQUADRON  IN    BLACK  SEA;    SIR  CHARLES   NAPIER,  K.C.B., 
COMMANDING    BALTIC    FLEET;    AND    ALLIED    NAVAL   COMMANDERS. 

by  modifying  the  views  of  those  whose  policy  I  thought  bad."  A  little 
later,  in  another  letter  to  the  same  person,  Lord  Palmerston  said  of  the 
members  of  the  government  :  "  Their  earnest  representations  and  the 
knowledge  that  the  cabinet  had  on  Thursday  taken  a  decision  on  Turkish 
affairs  In  entire  accordance  with  opinions  which  I  had  long  unsuccessfully 
pressed  upon  them,  decided  me  to  withdraw  my  resignation,  which  I  did 
yesterday.  Of  course,  what  I  say  to  you  about  the  cabinet  decision  on 
Turkish  affairs  is  entirely  for  yourself,  and  not  to  be  mentioned  to  anybody. 
But  it  is  very  Important,  and  will  give  the  allied  squadrons  the  command  of 
the  Black  Sea." 


240  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

With  the  opening  of  Parliament  many  severe  strictures  were  made  in 
both  Houses  on  the  conduct  of  the  war.  The  Earl  of  Derby  addressed  the 
Lords  in  criticism  and  condemnation  of  the  military  management  in  the 
Crimea.  The  Duke  of  Newcastle  spoke  in  reply.  In  the  House  of  Com- 
mons Disraeli  renewed  his  attacks  on  the  ministerial  methods  and  results. 
His  assault  was  sharp  and  bitter.  "  I  believe,"  said  he,  "  that  this  cabinet  of 
coalition  flattered  themselves,  and  were  credulous  in  their  flattery,  that  the 
tremendous  issues  which  they  have  had  to  encounter  and  which  must  make 
their  days  and  nights  anxious,  Avhich  have  been  part  of  their  lives,  would 
not  have  occurred.  They  could  never  dream,  for  instance,  that  it  would  be 
the  termination  of  the  career  of  a  noble  lord  to  carry  on  war  with  Russia, 
of  which  that  noble  lord  had  been  the  cherished  and  spoiled  child.  [This 
sallv  was'  made  at  Lord  Aberdeen,  who  had  been  a  favorite  at  St.  Peters- 
burg.]  It  has  been  clearly  shown  that  two  of  you  are  never  of  the  same 
opinion.  You  were  candid  enough  to  declare  this,  and  it  is  probable  that  no 
three  of  you  ever  supposed  the  result  would  be  what  it  has  been  found  to 
be.  .  .  .  No  Austrian  alliance;  no  Four  Points;"  no  secret  articles — but 
let  France  and  England  together  solve  this  great  question  and  establish  and 
secure  a  tranquilization  of  Europe." 

Agrainst  these  assaults  members  of  the  Qr-overnment  defended  them- 
selves  as  best  they  could.  Thus  did  Lord  John  Russell,  in  direct  reply  to 
Disraeli.  When  the  Queen's  Address  was  before  the  House,  Mr.  Gladstone 
entered  into  a  general  discussion  of  the  military  management.  He  gave  a 
summary  of  the  British  forces  in  the  East,  and  warded  off  the  allegations  of 
the  opposition.  He  said  that  the  government  were  not  impeccable,  but  the 
errors  which  they  had  committed  were  not  those  which  had  been  laid  to 
their  charge.  He  admitted  that  an  armv  of  fiftv  thousand  British  soldiers 
in  Asia  was  not  able  to  cope  with  the  Russian  empire  ;  but  that  force  was 
only  the  advance  division  which  had  been  sent  forward  from  Varna  to  the 
Crimea.  Besides,  there  were  the  allies.  The  French  already  had  at  the 
seat  of  war  more  than  ninety  thousand  men.  It  was  unjust,  in  view  of  such 
facts,  to  allege  that  the  crovernment  had  not  been  sufficientlv  active  in  send- 
ing  forces  to  the  East. 

*The  "  Four  Points  "  referred  to  by  Disraeli  were  those  under  contention  at  the  Vienna  Conference,  and  were 
as  follows : 

"  I.  Russian  protectorate  over  the  principalities  of  Wallachia,  Moldavia,  and  Servia  to  cease  ;  the  privileges 
granted  by  the  sultan  to  these  provinces  to  be  placed  under  a  collective  guarantee  of  the  powers. 

"  2.  Navigation  of  the  Danube  at  its  moutli  to  be  freed  from  all  obstacles  and  submitted  to  the  application  of 
the  principles  established  by  the  Congress  of  Vienna. 

"  3.  The  treaty  of  the  13th  of  July,  1841,  to  be  revived  in  concert  by  all  the  high  contracting  parties  in  the 
interest  of  the  balance  of  power  in  Europe,  and  so  as  to  put  an  end  to  the  preponderance  of  Russia  in  the  Black  Sea. 

"4.  Russia  to  give  up  her  claim  to  an  official  protectorate  over  the  subjects  of  tlie  Sublime  Porte  to  whatever 
rite  they  may  belong  ;  and  France,  Austria,  Great  Britain,  Prussia,  and  Russia  to  assist  mutually  in  obtaining 
from  the  Ottoman  government  the  confirmation  and  the  observance  of  the  religious  privileges  of  tlie  different 
Christian  communities,  and  to  turn  to  account,  in  the  common  interests  of  their  coreligionists,  the  generous  inten- 
tions manifested  by  the  sultan,  at  the  same  time  avoiding  any  aggression  on  his  dignity  and  the  independence  of 
his  crown." 


ACCESSION    OF    PALMERSTON    AND    TREATY    OF    PARIS.  24I 

In  the  next  place,  an  acrimonious  debate  ensued  over  what  was 
known  as  the  Foreign  Enlistment  Bill.  The  opposition  rallied  in  both  the 
Commons  and  the  Lords.  The  premier,  in  defending  the  proposed  measure, 
urged  that  the  foreign  recruits  contemplated  by  the  bill  were  not  to  be  con- 
sidered as  substitutes  for  English  .volunteers.  Neither  were  they  to  be 
used  in  Great  Britain.  The  pressure,  however,  was  so  great  that  the  gov- 
ernment agreed  to  reduce  the  number  of  foreign  enlistments  to  ten  thou- 
sand men.  The  situation  gave  Mr.  Disraeli  another  opportunity  to  speak 
against  the  ministry  and  to  portray  in  strong  colors  the  horrible  situation  of 
the  British  army  in  the  East.  John  Bright  also  spoke,  and  budged  not 
from  his  well-known  advocacy  of  peace.  In  the  course  of  his  speech  he 
declared  that  Great  Britain  in  alliance  with  Turkey  was  fighting  for  a  hope- 
less cause  and  with  a  worthless  ally.  The  Foreign  Enlistment  Bill,  however, 
was  passed,  though  the  ministerial  majority  was  reduced  from  more  than  a 
hundred,  at  which  figure  it  had  stood  during  the  previous  session,  to  only 
thirty-eight. 

After  this  measure  Parliament  adjourned  for  the  holidays,  and  on  reas- 
sembling the  temper  of  hostility  to  the  government  was  still  more  strongly 
manifested.  So  powerful  had  the  pressure  become  that  the  opposition  went 
forward  to  move  an  inquiry  into  the  condition  of  military  affairs  in  the 
Crimea,  and  at  this  the  crovernment  weakened  before  its  adversaries.  The 
resolution  was  offered  by  the  Honorable  John  Arthur  Roebuck  of  Sheffield. 
Lord  John  Russell  suddenly  resigned  his  office  as  president  of  the  council. 
Hereupon  the  Duke  of  Newcastle,  minister  of  the  war  department,  offered 
himself  as  a  sacrifice;  for  it  was  believed  that  the  animosity  of  the  country 
was  most  of  all  directed  against  the  duke,  and  that  his  retirement  would 
suffice.  A  wreck  of  the  whole  ministry  seemed  imminent,  but  the  members 
of  the  cabinet  were  for  the  time  dissuaded  from  their  purpose,  and  with  the 
exception  of  Lord  John  Russell  remained  in  office.  That  statesman  with- 
drew, and  was  followed  by  the  anathemas  of  the  opposition,  charging  him 
with  cowardice  in  thus  saving  himself  at  the  expense  of  his  colleagues. 

The  question  now  came  whether  the  resolution  of  inquiry  into  the  man- 
agement of  the  war  would  pass.  The  Honorable  Sidney  Herbert,  speaking 
for  the  government,  denied  that  the  condition  of  the  British  army  in  the 
East  was  so  terrible  as  had  been  portrayed.  Moreover,  if  the  resolution  of 
inquiry  should  pass,  the  effect  of  it  would  be  not  to  stimulate,  but  rather  to 
paralyze  the  military  management.  To  this  Mr.  Stafford  replied  in  a  power- 
ful, if  not  unanswerable,  speech.  He  himself  had  been  recently  at  the  seat 
of  war,  and  was  able  to  speak  from  personal  observation.  He  declared  that 
the  hospitals  at  Scutari  and  Abydos  had  been  established  in  unhealthy 
places,  and  that  their  management  was  as  defective  as  the  situation  was  dan- 
gerous. In  such  a  situation  her  majesty's  soldiers,  wounded  or  sick,  had 
16 


242 


LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM     E.    GLADSTONE 


C/5 


ACCESSION    Ol-    I'ALMERSTON    AND    TREATY    OF    PARIS.  243 

small  chance  of  recovery.  The  hospitals  referred  to,  however,  were  better 
than  that  at  Balaklava.  The  latter  was  as  bad  as  could  well  be  imaeined. 
The  bedclothino-  was  not  washed  when  the  sick  or  dead  were  removed.  New 
sufferers  coming  into  the  place  of  the  old  caught  the  diseases  with  which  the 
miserable  berths  were  infected.  The  fevers  and  other  contagions  of  the 
camp  were  transmitted  from  one  patient  to  another,  until  all  chance  of 
recovery  was  ended.  The  accommodations  were  not  sufficient.  The  sick 
and  dying  were  crowded  together.  In  one  room  he  had  seen  fourteen  suf- 
ferers, and  in  another  nine  prostrate  British  soldiers  on  the  floor — this,  too, 
when  there  were  bedsteads  standing  in  the  passageways,  the  putting  up  of 
which  would  scarcely  have  occupied  three  minutes'  time  of  an  attendant. 

Mr.  Stafford  said  that  he  had  witnessed  special  cases  of  neglect  amount- 
ing to  cruelty.  He  had  seen  three  hundred  sick  in  a  hospital  without  sup- 
plies. Not  even  wine  could  be  had.  He  had  seen  the  soldiers  begging  for 
their  own  knapsacks,  in  the  hope  of  finding  therein  the  remnants  of  their 
former  supplies.  He  had  seen  men  sick  or  wounded  almost  to  death  lying 
uncared  for  on  naked  floors.  The  speaker  then  narrated  the  remark  made 
to  him  in  bitter  sarcasm  by  a  French  officer,  who  was  with  him  a  fellow-wit- 
ness of  the  scenes  described  in  the  Crimean  bivouacs.  "  You  see,  sir,"  said 
he,  "  you  carry  on  war  according  to  the  system  of  the  Middle  Ages;  and  our 
regret  for  our  own  backwardness  is  increased  because  we  see  the  noble  lives 
you  are  losing."  Against  all  this  horror  the  speaker  contrasted  the  ministra- 
tions of  Florence  Nightingale  and  her  assistants.  He  also  spoke  of  the  devo- 
tion and  loyalty  of  the  soldiers  and  of  the  magic  effect  of  the  queen's  letter 
of  sympathy  which  was  read  to  them. 

The  effect  of  such  a  speech  as  that  of  Stafford  in  the  House  of  Com- 
mons may  well  be  imagined.  The  tone  and  manner  of  It  were  precisely  of 
a  kind  to  overthrow  any  ministry  that  could  be  shown  to  be  blameworthy 
in  the  matters  referred  to.  It  devolved  upon  Mr.  Gladstone  to  make  the 
best  rally  he  could  In  defense  of  the  government.  He  very  rarely  appeared 
to  a  better  advantage  than  in  the  reply  which  he  made  on  the  question  of 
Roebuck's  resolution.  In  beginning  his  remarks  he  animadverted  severely 
upon  the  conduct  of  Lord  John  Russell,  not,  indeed,  in  the  administration 
of  his  office,  but  in  resigning  from  the  ministry  In  a  time  of  trial  and  under 
the  fire  of  the  opposition. 

A  short  time  before  this  Lord  Russell  had  pronounced  a  euloglum  on 
Gladstone,  not  undeserved.  This  fact  did  not  deter  the  speaker,  however, 
trom  strongly  censuring  his  lordship  for  his  conduct.  He  showed  that  as 
late  as  the  preceding  November  there  had  been  no  formal  complaints 
against  the  Duke  of  Newcastle  In  the  administration  of  his  office  as  war 
minister.  Lord  John  Russell  had  himself  approved  of  that  administration, 
declarincr  his  conviction  that  the  war  office  had  been  as  well  administered  as 


244 


LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 


might  be  by  anyone  under  the  circumstances.  Besides  this,  Lord  Russell 
had  hardly  acted  with  good  faith  toward  the  Earl  of  Aberdeen  ;  for  as  late 
as  the  middle  of  December  he  had  assured  him  that  he  would  not  urge 
any  changes  in  the  department  of  war.  It  had  thus  happened  that  Lord 
John  Russell's  colleagues  in  the  ministry  had  not  known  of  his  intentions 


LORD    PALMERSTON. 


to  press  his  purpose  of  a  change,  or  of  his  alternative  of  resignation  from 
the  cabinet.  Under  such  conditions  to  resign  from  the  orovernment  without 
first  attempting  or  advising  a  reorganization  was  to  treat  that  government 
with  injustice  and  contempt. 

Mr.  Gladstone  then  broke  into  a  passage  of  extraordinary  eloquence. 
What  he  said  in  conclusion  was  perhaps  as  powerful  as  any  of  his  utter- 
ances. Speaking  for  the  ministry  he  said  that  "  he  felt  it  was  not  for  them 
either  to  attempt  to  make  terms  with  the  House  by  a  reorganization  or  to 


ACCESSION    OF    PALMERSTON    AND    TREATY    OF    PARIS.  245 

shrink  from  a  judgment  of  the  House  upon  their  past  acts.  If  they  should 
shrink  what  sort  of  epitaph  would  be  written  over  their  remains  ?  He 
himself  would  write  it  thus  :  '  Here  lie  the  dishonored  ashes  of  the  ministry 
which  found  England  at  peace  and  left  it  in  war,  which  was  content  to 
enjoy  the  emoluments  of  office  and  to  wield  the  scepter  of  power  so  long 
as  no  man  had  the  courage  to  question  their  existence.  They  saw  the 
storm  gathering  over  the  country  ;  they  heard  the  agonizing  accounts  which 
were  almost  daily  received  of  the  state  of  the  sick  and  wounded  in  the 
East.  These  things  did  not  move  them.  But  so  soon  as  the  honorable 
member  for  Sheffield  raised  his  hand  to  point  the  thunderbolt  they  became 
conscience-stricken  with  a  sense  of  guilt,  and,  hoping  to  escape  punishment, 
they  ran  away  from  duty.'  " 

This  courageous  rally  stayed  the  torrent  of  invective  and  gained  a 
hearing  for  the  ministry.  It  is  seldom  that  a  keener  thrust  had  been  made 
by  one  parliamentarian  at  another  than  that  which  Gladstone  delivered  to 
Lord  John  Russell  ;  but  the  speaker  by  no  means  paused  after  delivering 
his  philippic  against  his  late  colleague.  He  went  on  to  declare  that  he 
would  not  resist  the  resolution  of  inquiry  if  he  believed  that  the  same 
would  be  beneficial  to  the  army  and  the  country  ;  but  he  did  not  so  believe. 
He  was  assured  that  the  evils  complained  of  would  be  aggravated  by  the 
adoption  of  the  motion  before  the  House,  If  an  investigation  had  been 
needed  at  any  time  it  was  now  needed  no  longer.  It  was  manifest  to  all 
that  the  condition  of  the  army  in  the  East  had  been  bettered  of  late.  The 
supplies  sent  out  had  been  received.  If  the  huts  for  the  soldiers  had  not 
already  been  set  up  they  were  in  process  of  construction.  The  clothing 
had  actually  been  distributed.  Within  three  weeks  the  railway  would  be 
completed.  An  arrangement  had  been  made  between  the  British  and 
French  officers  by  which  a  relay  of  sixteen  hundred  French  soldiers  should 
relieve  a  like  number  of  British  soldiers  in  the  trenches. 

Besides  all,  continued  the  speaker,  the  allegations  about  the  strength 
and  condition  of  the  British  army  in  the  Crimea  were  untrue.  There  were 
before  Sebastopol  more  than  thirty  thousand  men.  Members  of  the  House 
had  made  unfavorable  comparisons  between  the  military  management  of 
Great  Britain  and  that  of  her  ally,  France.  He  believed  that  such  compar- 
ison would,  on  the  whole,  be  favorable  to  Great  Britain  ;  but  he  thought 
such  questions  ought  not  to  be  discussed  relative  to  the  merits  of  allies  in 
war.  The  department  of  war  had  improved  in  its  methods,  and  was  not 
deserving  of  censure.  The  Duke  of  Newcastle  ought  to  be  praised  rather 
than  denounced  for  his  conduct  of  the  military  affairs  of  the  kingdom. 

This  defense  of  what  remained  of  the  Aberdeen  ministry  might  have 
sufficed,  and  doubtless  would  have  sufficed  if  the  question  had  been  only 
an  issue  of  peace  ;    but  neither   Parliament  nor  the  British  public  was  in  a 


246  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

humor  to  allow  such  a  matter  as  alleged  abuses  in  the  management  of  a 
British  army  in  Asia  to  go  by  without  satisfying  itself  as  to  the  facts  and 
merits  of  the  controversy.  It  became  manifest  that  the  resolution  of  inquiry 
would  prevail  in  some  form  or  other.  Mr.  Disraeli  made  the  point  that  the 
ministry  admitted  itself  to  be  in  need  of  reorganization.  Then  he  remarked 
sarcastically  that  the  House  was  expected  to  pass  a  vote  of  confidence  in 
an  administration  with  the  person7iel  of  which  it  was  not  acquainted  ! 
Employing  his  own  peculiar  manner,  he  rather  defended  the  Duke  of  New- 
castle, urging  the  assertion  that  the  duke  was  only  a  member  of  a  cabinet 
whose  policy,  as  a  whole,  was  reprehensible.  Neither  might  the  military 
system  of  Great  Britain  be  assailed  ;  for  that  system,  in  the  hands  of  com- 
petent men,  was  not  only  unassailable,  but  victorious.  The  speaker 
attacked  Lord  John  Russell  with  extreme  violence,  and  finally  characterized 
his  policy  as  a  profligate  intrigue.  He  asserted  that  the  strifes  and  quarrels 
of  the  English  cabinet  had  disgraced  the  nation  in  the  eyes  of  Europe. 
Under  the  auspices  of  the  coalition  ministry  England  was  no  longer  the 
leading  power.  Only  two  years  previously  she  had  been  such  a  power,  but 
now  she  held  that  proud  position  no  longer. 

Lord  John  Russell  attempted  to  defend  himself,  but  not  very  happily. 
In  the  course  of  his  speech  he  averred  that  if  he  should  reveal  the  actual 
intercourse  between  himself,  Lord  Aberdeen,  and  the  minister  of  war,  then 
Parliament  would  hardly  hold  toward  himself  the  attitude  of  censure.  This 
admission,  however,  and  implication  of  secret  difficulties,  though  it  might 
explain,  could  hardly  excuse.  The  tide  rose  higher  and  higher  against  the 
government,  and  when  the  House  came  to  vote  on  the  resolution  to  inves- 
tigate the  conduct  of  the  war  the  government  was  overwhelmed  with  a 
majority  of  a  hundred  and  fifty-seven  !  The  victory  of  the  opposition  was 
so  complete  as  to  astonish  and  almost  terrify  those  who  had  achieved  it. 
The  government  of  the  Earl  of  Aberdeen  went  down  with  a  crash,  burying 
its  several  parts  in  the  ruins. 

Of  those  who  were  overwhelmed  Mr.  Gladstone  was  least  of  all  affected. 
It  could  hardly  be  said  that  he  was  humiliated  by  the  result.  He  had 
foreseen  the  inevitable,  and  was  prepared  for  it.  His  speech  on  the 
occasion  of  the  secession  of  Lord  John  Russell  showed  that  he  clearly 
foresaw  the  inevitable  dissolution  of  the  existing  order.  Gladstone  was 
himself  the  greatest  of  the  so-called  Peelite  faction  in  the  government. 
The  remainder  was  mostly  Whig.  It  was  really  the  Whig  portion  of  the 
structure  that  collapsed.  The  Peelite  abutment  was  hardly  moved  from  its 
place. 

On  the  ist  of  P^ebruary,  1855,  the  ministry  of  Lord  Aberdeen  resigned 
from  office.  When  the  announcement  was  made  In  the  House  of  Commons 
the    Duke  of  Newcastle  told  that  body   that  it  had  been  his  purpose  for 


ACCESSION    OF    PALMERSTON    AND    TREATY    OF    PARIS.  247 

some  time  to  resign  the  office  of  secretary  of  war.  He  had  not  been 
driven  to  this  step  so  much  by  the />assao-e  of  the.  Roebuck  resolution  as 
by  the  offering  of  such  a  resolution.  He  had  been  prevented  from  resigna- 
tion by  the  wishes  of  his  colleagues  in  the  ministry. 

After  Aberdeen,  whom  ?  Her  majesty  must  have  a  ministry,  and  the 
political  conditions  were  chaotic.  She  first  sent  for  the  Earl  of  Derby. 
That  nobleman,  on  being  summoned,  expressed  his  willingness  to  accept 
Lord  Palmerston  as  minister  of  war;  but  he  told  the  queen  that  he  could 
not  construct  a  government  without  the  aid  of  the  Peelites.  To  these  he 
appealed — but  in  vain.  The  party  of  Gladstone  and  Sidney  Herbert  offered 
indeed  to  enter  the  ministry  of  the  Earl  of  Derby,  but  must  do  so  as 
independents.  With  this  Lord  Derby  could  not  be  satisfied.  Indeed,  the 
story  goes  that  he  told  her  majesty  that  to  his  mind  an  "  independent "  in 
the  British  cabinet  signified  a  member  luJio  cotild  not  be  depended  on — a  mot 
not  wanting  in  wit. 

The  queen  in  the  next  place  called  Lord  Lansdovvne ;  but  that 
statesman  directed  her  majesty  to  Lord  John  Russell.  To  him  the  queen 
made  the  next  appeal,  suggesting  to  Lord  Russell  that  Lord  Palmerston 
should  be  included  as  a  member  of  the  cabinet.  The  latter  seemed  to  be  a 
necessity  of  the  situation.  It  was  also  reckoned  essential  that  Lord 
Clarendon  should  be  included,  but  the  latter  was  irreconcilable  with  Lord 
Russell,  on  the  eround  that  Lord  Russell,  while  a  member  of  the  Aberdeen 
ministry,  had  refused  to  support  that  ministry. 

The  effort  of  Lord  John  Russell  to  form  a  new  government  thus  came 
to  nothing.  Everything  drifted  powerfully  in  the  direction  of  Palmerston. 
That  able  and  eccentric  leader  was  accordingly  called,  and  by  retaining 
Gladstone  and  a  few  of  his  friends  was  enabled  to  construct  a  cabinet  of 
great  abilities.  /\t  the  first  Mr.  Gladstone  declined  to  be  a  member  of  the 
new  government,  on  the  ground  that  his  fortunes  as  well  as  his  sympathies 
were  involved  with  the  Earl  of  Aberdeen  and  the  Duke  of  Newcastle. 
These  scruples,  however,  were  overcome,  and  he  resumed  his  duties  as  chan- 
cellor of  the  exchequer.  The  ministry  was  constituted  as  follows  :  First  Lord 
of  the  Treasury,  Viscount  Palmerston  ;  Lord  Chancellor,  Lord  Cranworth  ; 
President  of  the  Council,  Earl  Granville;  Privy  Seal,  Duke  of  Argyle ; 
Foreign  Secretary,  Earl  of  Clarendon ;  Colonial  Secretary,  the  Right 
Honorable  Sidney  Herbert;  Home  Secretary,  Sir  George  Gray;  Secretary 
for  War,  Lord  Panmure  ;  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer,  Right  Honorable 
W.  E.  Gladstone;  First  Lord  of  the  Admiralty,  Sir  James  Graham;  Public 
Works,  Sir  William  Molesworth.  In  the  cabinet,  but  without  office,  the 
Marquis  of  Lansdowne  ;  President  of  the  Board  of  Control,  Sir  Charles 
Wood. 

The  House  of  Commons,  after  the  manner  of  that  body,  looked  around 


248  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

to  scan  the  new  cabinet  and  measure  its  capacities.  At  the  first  the 
judgment  was  favorable  to  that  body,  but  the  discovery  was  soon  made 
that  the  government  was,  after  all,  too  much  like  that  which  had  been 
recently  discarded.  It  was  not  long  until  challenges  were  openly  made  by 
leaders  in  the  House,  demanding  that  the  new  ministry  should  justify  its 
existence.  On  the  19th  of  February,  1855,  Mr.  Layard  spoke  on  the 
condition  of  the  country,  asserting  that  Great  Britain  was  standing  on  the 
brink  of  ruin.  He  declared  that  the  nation  had  fallen  into  the  abyss 
of  disgrace,  and  had  become  a  laughing  stock  in  Europe.  He  ended  by 
interrogating  the  government  on  the  following  points :  Whether  Lord 
Palmerston  was  willing  to  accept  peace  on  any  terms  ?  Whether  the 
country  was  going  to  engage  in  prolonged  hostilities }  Whether  it  was 
proposed  to  engage  on  our  (Great  Britain's)  behalf  oppressed  nationalities  } 
Whether  the  Circassians  would  be  assisted  or  not.?  And,  in  general,  what 
was  going  to  be  the  foreign  policy  of  the  government  } 

The  speaker  continued  by  instituting  a  comparison  between  the 
management  of  Great  Britain  and  that  of  the  French  Convention  of  1792. 
That  body  watched  the  military  proceedings  of  the  republic  with  the 
greatest  vigilance,  and  sent  out  their  own  members  to  different  parts  of  the 
field,  to  accompany  the  generals,  and  to  report  to  the  convention  the 
progress  of  events,  and  in  particular  any  failure  on  the  part  of  commanders 
to  meet  the  expectations  of  the  country.  In  Great  Britain  no  such  measure 
as  this,  or  indeed  any  efficient  measure,  had  been  adopted  whereby  Parlia- 
ment might  be  well  informed  of  the  actual  state  of  affairs  in  the  East. 

Hereupon  Lord  Palmerston — who  from  beginning  to  end  of  his 
administration  showed  himself  a  master  of  fence — suof^ested  that  it  would 
be  the  pleasure  of  Parliament  to  send  Mr.  Layard  himself  to  the  seat  of 
war  in  Asia,  and  to  retain  him  there  until  the  end  of  the  conflict !  The 
premier,  continuing,  expressed  his  own  profound  sympathy  and  that  of  the 
House  for  the  British  army  that  had  suffered  so  many  hardships,  and  also 
his  regrets  for  any  errors  and  mismanagement  that  might  have  occurred. 
The  present  government,  however,  had  been  called  in  a  time  of  emergency, 
and  had  accepted  the  trust  from  a  sense  of  duty,  which  he  did  not  doubt  the 
country  would  understand  and  appreciate. 

The  Honorable  John  Arthur  Roebuck  would  not  by  any  means  allow 
his  resolution  to  investigate  the  military  management  to  go  by  default.  He 
presently  reported  his  committee  of  inquiry,  and  his  purpose  was  approved 
by  the  House.  Mr.  Gladstone  strongly  opposed  the  revival  of  this  measure, 
and  when  he  could  not  stem  the  adverse  tide  of  public  opinion  he  resigned 
from  the  ministry.  With  him  went  Sir  James  Graham  and  Sidney  Herbert. 
It  would  appear,  however,  that  the  retirement  of  this,  the  Peellte  wing  of 
the  government,  only  awaited  an  occasion,  the  cause  being  already  operative 


ACCESSION    OF    PALMERSTON    AND    TREATY    OF    PARIS. 


249 


out  of  the  past.  At  any  rate  the  chancellor  of  the  exchequer,  the  first  lord 
of  the  admiralty,  and  the  colonial  secretary  retired  and  were  succeeded,  the 
first  by  Sir  G.  C.  Lewis,  the  second  by  Sir  Charles  Wood,  and  the  third  by 
Lord  John  Russell.  The  breach  in  the  cabinet  was  thus  closed  up  ;  the 
committee  of  inquiry  was  constituted  ;  but  before  it  could  enter  upon  its 
duties  Great  Britain,  and  indeed  all  Europe,  were  startled  by  the  report 
that  the  Emperor  Nicholas,  struck  with  mortal  chagrin  by  the  events  at 
Sebastopol,  had  fallen  dead  of  apoplexy.  The  imperial  crown  was  trans- 
ferred immediately  to  the  head  of  his  son,  Alexander  IL 

For  the  moment  there  was  universal  expectation  relative  to  the 
purpose  of  the  new  autocrat  in  pursuing  the  war  or  ceasing  from  its 
prosecution.  He  seemingly  did  both.  His 
proclamation  on  taking  the  throne  was  in 
the  same  tone  and  manner  as  the  mani- 
festoes -of  his  father.  At  the  same  time, 
however,  he  expressed  his  willingness  to 
send  an  ambassador  to  participate  In  the 
Vienna  Conference.  That  highly  diplo- 
matical  body  had  not  yet  convened,  but 
was  soon  to  do  so.  England,  for  her  part, 
just  after  the  reorganization  of  the  cabinet, 
appointed  Lord  John  Russell  to  represent 
the  British  view  at  the  Vienna  meeting. 
The  Conference  entered  on  its  work  on 
the  15th  of  March,  1855.  It  was  not  long 
until  the  position  of  Russia  was  thoroughly 
understood.  She  refused  to  accept  the 
third  of  the  four  points,'"'  hitherto  ex- 
plained. That  clause  of  the  proposals  made  by  the  allies  related  to  the 
revision  of  the  treaty  of  the  13th  of  July,  1841,  so  that  it  should  become  an 
acknowledged  principle  of  the  balance  of  power  in  Europe  that  the  pre- 
ponderance of  Russia  in  the  Black  Sea  should  end.  But  Russia  w^as  by  no 
means  willing  that  her  preponderance  on  that  sea  should  either  end  or  be 
limited.  As  to  the  other  three  points,  there  was  not  so  much  disagreement 
as  seriously  to  impede  the  negotiations. 

Prince  Gortchakof,  representing  the  czar,  stubbornly  refused  to  yield 
the  point  of  limiting  the  power  of  his  master  on  the  coveted  coast. 
Speaking  for  Russia,  he  submitted  proposals  which  were  unacceptable  to 
England  and  France.  A  proposition  w^as  made  by  the  representative  of 
Austria,  which  for  the  moment  promised  a  basis  of  settlement ;  but  this 
also  was  not  satisfactory  to  England  and  France.     For  the  time,  however, 

*  See  page  240. 


LORD   JOHN    RUSSELL. 


250  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

the  Austrian  measure  was  favored  by  the  French  and  English  ambassadors, 
but  they  gained  thereby  only  loss  of  prestige  in  their  respective  countries, 
with  the  necessity  of  resigning  their  posts. 

The  Vienna  Conference  virtually  came  to  naught.  The  effect  of  the 
movement  was  still  further  to  fan  the  animosity  of  the  opposition  in  Parlia- 
ment and  to  increase  the  agitation  of  the  country.  It  appeared  that  a 
peace  which  was  regarded  as  dishonorable  had  been  well-nigh  brought 
about  through  the  weakness  of  Lord  John  Russell.  This  fact  was  well 
calculated  to  rouse  English  sentiment  to  the  highest  pitch.  The  queen 
and  the  country  were  at  one  in  the  opinion  that  the  failure  of  the  Vienna 
Conference  was  a  narrow  escape  from  humiliation. 

It  was  an  emergency  of  this  kind  that  always  brought  forth  the 
strongest  elements  and  profoundest  resources  in  the  character  of  Benjamin 
Disraeli.  On  the  24th  of  May,  1855,  he  brought  before  the  House  of 
Commons  the  following  resolution  :  "  That  this  House  cannot  adjourn  for 
the  recess  without  expressing  its  dissatisfaction  with  the  ambiguous 
language  and  uncertain  conduct  of  her  majesty's  government  in  reference 
to  the  great  question  of  peace  or  war;  and  that  under  these  circumstances 
this  House  feels  it  a  duty  to  declare  that  it  will  continue  to  give  every 
support  to  her  majesty  in  the  prosecution  of  the  war,  until  her  majesty 
shall,  in  conjunction  with  her  allies,  obtain  for  this  country  a  safe  and 
honorable  peace." 

This  resolution  the  leader  of  the  opposition  supported  with  one  of  his 
characteristic  speeches.  He  assailed  Lord  John  Russell  with  mingled 
argument  and  invective.  He  showed  that  that  statesman  had  denounced 
Russia  and  her  policy  in  as  strong  terms  as  any  other  member  of  the 
House.  Now,  when  it  came  to  the  responsibilities  of  an  ambassador, 
representing  her  majesty's  government  abroad  in  the  all-important  negotia- 
tions pending  at  Vienna,  he  had  shown  himself  weak  and  incompetent. 
Lord  Russell  had  come  nearly  concluding  a  peace  that  was  impossible. 
The  dishonor  to  England  of  the  proposal  made  by  Austria,  of  which  Lord 
John  had  approved,  had  extended  into  the  House  of  Commons,  and  a 
member  in  that  body  had  offered  a  resolution  to  the  effect  that  the  proposi- 
tions of  Russia,  being  reasonable,  ought  not  to  have  been  refused  by  the 
government.  Here  we  have,  continued  the  speaker,  the  spectacle  of 
diplomacy  and  war  existing  at  the  same  time,  and  neither  the  one  nor  the 
other  prosecuted  in  a  way  to  reflect  anything  but  distress  and  shame  on 
Great  Britain. 

We  here  reach  a  passage  in  the  life  of  \V.  E.  Gladstone  which  has 
never  been  approved  or  justified  by  a  considerable  number  of  his  country- 
men. It  \vould  appear  to  an  American  author  that  the  statesman  at  this 
juncture  w^as  led  by  the   method  and  manner  of  his  opponent,  Disraeli,  to 


ACCESSION    OF    PALMERSTON    AND    TREATY    OF    PARIS. 


251 


take  a  position  of  which  his  better  judgment,  not  so  influenced  by  the 
personal  equation,  could  not  have  approved.  Besides,  the  challenge  of 
Disraeli  was  necessarily  retrospective,  reaching  back  to  the  administration 
of  Lord  Aberdeen  and  censuring  that  administration  by  implication  even 
more  strongly  than  that  of  Palmerston.  In  any  event,  Mr.  Gladstone  in  his 
reply  put  himself  into  the  attitude  of  favoring,  not  only  the  first,  second, 
and  fourth  of  the  four  points  of  the  Vienna  agreement,  but  into  the  attitude 
of  defending  the  position  of  Russia  relative  to  the  third  point.  He  said 
that  he  /lad  been  in  favor  of  laying  a 'restriction  on  the  power  of  Russia  in 


M.  lie  TitolT.  Karl  of  Westmoreland.  Drouyn  Je  Lhuys. 

Baron  Meysenburg.        M.  Von  Hammer,  Turkish  Interpreter.     Riza  Bey.        Lord  John  Russell.  Count  Buol. 

Prince  Gortchakof.        Arif  Effendi.  Baron  Prokesch-Osten. 

VIENNA   CONFERENCE. 

the  Black  Sea,  but  that  in  the  light  of  a  revised  judgment  and  of  existing 
facts  he  now  thought  that  the  third  point,  if  gained  by  the  allies,  would 
be  a  great  indignity  to  Russia.  He  had  thought,  moreover,  that  the 
proposal  made  by  Russia  to  give  to  the  porte  the  power  of  opening  and 
shutting  the  straits  was  one  that  mig-ht  be  used  as  a  basis  of  settlement. 
In  the  existing  situation  of  affairs  he  was  not  able  to  recall  an  instance  out 
of  history  in  which  one  of  the  parties  to  a  war  had  more  fully  gained  the 
political  objects  of  the  war  than  had  the  allies  in  the  present  contest  with 
Russia;   that  is,  he  had  known  no  instance  of  a  war  that  had  accomplished 


252  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

its  political  purposes  any  more  completely  without  the  absolute  prostration 
of  the  other  party  thereto.  Here,  then,  was  an  opportunity  of  returning  to 
the  happiness  of  peace,  of  concluding  the  bloody  drama  of  war,  and  he 
should  be  derelict  in  his  duty  if  he  did  not  incline  to  the  opportunity  of 
peace  rather  than  to  the  continuance  of  war.  A  great  nation  might  not 
battle  for  mere  military  success.  The  House,  looking  at  this  question  with 
the  dispassion  of  reason,  would  perceive  that  war  for  military  success  only 
is  immoral,  inhuman,  and  unchristian.  Should  the' war  be  continued  in 
order  to  reap  military  glory  the  British  nation  would  tempt  the  justice  of 
God,  in  whose  hands  was  the  fate  of  armies. 

This  pacific  and  not  unworthy  plea  moved  the  House  of  Commons 
more  to  aversion  than  to  sympathy.  The  speaker  had  struck  a  chord 
which  would  not  vibrate  while  the  winds  of  war  were  blowing  through  the 
British  harp.  The  world  knows  well  the  English  ire  when  it  is  once  pro- 
voked to  battle.  Whatever  vices  may  exist  in  the  English  race — and  they 
are  many — cowardice  and  easiness  of  temper  under  real  or  imaginary  insult 
and  provocation  are  not  among  them.  Let  not  man  think  that  the  Briton 
will  not  fight. 

The  history  of  the  House  of  Commons  might  well  be  interpreted  into 
a  history  of  human  nature  more  exact  than  may  be  found  in  the  metaphys- 
ics of  Sir  William  Hamilton.  The  incident  we  have  just  described  brought 
out  a  reply  also  from  Lord  John  Russell,  who  put  himself,  as  it  were, 
between  Gladstone  and  Disraeli.  To  the  former  he  answered  that  it  had 
now  become  necessary,  under  the  system  of  balance  of  power  in  Europe, 
to  restrict  both  the  political  and  military  ambition  of  Russia.  As  to  the 
indignity  to  Russia  implied  in  insisting  on  the  third  of  the  four  points, 
namely,  a  revision  of  the  treaty  of  1841,  that  indignity  could  not  be  greater 
now  than  it  was  during  the  administration  of  Mr.  Gladstone,  when  he  had 
uro-ed  the  very  same  measure  !  Great  Britain,  after  expending  so  much, 
could  not  be  expected  to  accept  less  than  she  had  insisted  upon  in  going 
to  war.  Granted  that  the  third  point  might  be  waived  by  the  allies,  and 
Russia  have  her  way,  then  there  would  be  no  guarantee  for  the  Ottoman 
power  in  the  first  place,  or  for  any  European  power  afterward.  So  the 
question  came  to  an  issue  on  the  adoption  of  Disraeli's  resolution,  and  the 
vote  showed  that  the  government  of  Palmerston  had  the  confidence  of  the 
House  by  a  majority  of  a  hundred  votes. 

We  may  here  note  a  matter  of  considerable  importance  to  a  right 
understanding  of  Gladstone's  life.  It  is  well  known,  wherever  political 
information  is  abundant,  that  Mr,  Gladstone  was  rarely,  if  ever,  a  favorite 
with  the  Queen  of  England  and  her  immediate  supporters.  On  the  con- 
trary, he  was  nearly  always  under  her  majesty's  disfavor.  In  the  times  of 
his  greatest  ascendency,  when  as  the   head  of  the  government  he  must  be 


ACCESSION    OF    PALMERSTON    AND    TREATY    OF    PARIS.  253 

deferred  to  and  honored,  the  deference  and  the  honor  were  both  coldly- 
conferred,  and  only  according  to  the  measure  of  royal  etiquette.  This  con- 
dition of  personal  relationship  must  be  traced,  we  think,  to  the  mistake  and 
weakness  of  Mr.  Gladstone's  speech  in  the  Commons  in  May  of  1855. 

A  great  deal  of  side  light  is  thrown  upon  the  question  in  hand  by  the 
private  correspondence  of  Prince  Albert.  That  royal  gentleman  was  a 
perfect  mirror  of  the  sentiments  of  the  queen.  She  confided  in  him 
implicitly,  and  he  was  discreet;  but  his  private  letters  now  reveal  to  us 
many  things  that  then  to  know  would  have  set  the  world  to  talking.  In  a 
letter  which  the  prince  addressed  at  this  juncture  to  Lord  Aberdeen  he 
declared  :  "  Any  such  declaration  as  Mr.  Gladstone  has  made  upon  Mr.  Dis- 
raeli's motion  must  not  only  weaken  us  abroad  in  public  estimation  and  give 
a  wrong  opinion  as  to  the  determination  of  the  nation  to  support  the  queen 
in  the  war  in  which  she  has  been  involved,  but  render  all  chance  of  obtain- 
ing an  honorable  peace  without  great  fresh  sacrifices  of  blood  and  treasure 
impossible,  by  giving  new  hopes  and  spirit  to  the  enemy."  What  is  here 
said  was  certainly  the  sentiment  of  the  crown,  and  the  opinion  of  her  maj- 
esty relative  to  the  weak  and  un-English  spirit  of  her  late  chancellor  of  the 
exchequer  was  doubtlessly  never  revised. 

Other  speakers  in  the  course  of  the  debates  pressed  Mr.  Gladstone 
hardly.  Among  these  one  of  the  ablest  and  least  merciful  was  Sir  Edward 
Bulwer-Lytton,  whose  peroration  and  attack  on  Gladstone  created  a  furore 
in  the  House.  "  When,"  said  Sir  Edward,  "  Mr.  Gladstone  was  dwelling  in 
a  Christian  spirit  that  moved  us  all  on  the  gallant  blood  shed  by  England 
and  her  allies  and  by  her  foemen  in  that  quarrel,  did  it  never  occur  to  him 
that  all  the  while  he  was  speaking  this  one  question  was  forcing  itself  upon 
the  minds  of  his  English  audience,  '  And  shall  all  this  blood  have  been  shed 
in  vain  ?  '  " 

The  next  parliamentary  passage  of  importance  also  arose  from  the  dis- 
satisfied opposition.  It  was  on  the  loth  of  July,  1855,  that  Sir  Edward 
Bulwer-Lytton  brought  before  the  Commons  the  following  resolution  : 
"  That  the  conduct  of  our  ministry  in  the  recent  negotiations  at  Vienna 
has,  in  the  opinion  of  this  House,  shaken  the  confidence  of  this  country  in 
those  to  whom  its  affairs  are  intrusted."  Here  was  a  challenge  indeed  ! 
The  Lytton  resolution  was  equivalent  to  a  direct  motion  of  want  of  confi- 
dence. Perhaps  Lord  Lytton  did  not  intend  to  condemn  the  ministry  as  a 
whole.  His  shaft  was  leveled  at  Lord  John  Russell,  late  ambassador  of 
Great  Britain,  with  full  power,  in  the  Vienna  Conference.  Lord  John  was, 
as  it  were,  sino-led  out,  and  he  could  not  stand  fire.  Unwilling  to  face  the 
impending  debate,  he  resigned  from  the  cabinet,  and  when  the  Lytton  reso- 
lution was  called  up  the  resignation  was  announced  in  Parliament. 

Lord   Russell,   in   retiring,  explained  that   he  had  not  given  away  the 


254  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

cause  of  his  country  at  Vienna  by  supporting  or  promising  to  support  the 
Austrian  propositions.  Those  propositions  had  been  rejected  by  the  Brit- 
ish cabinet.  He  submitted  to  the  decision  of  his  government,  and  any  favor 
that  he  had  shown  to  the  Austrian  method  of  settlement  was  only  such  as 
he  had  given  in  fulfillment  of  a  promise  made  to  Count  Buol.  In  conclud- 
ing his  address  he  turned  the  argument  which  had  been  so  mercilessly  used 
against  himself  against  his  professed  friends,  whom  he  accused,  whenever 
there  was  a  rub  in  his  fortunes,  of  flowing  from  him  like  water.  Such  sup- 
porters were  calculated  only  to  sink  him  whom  they  supported,  and  for  such 
he  had  nothing  to  offer  but  contempt. 

Whatever  may  have  been  the  merit  of  the  controversy,  the  act  of  Lord 
Russell  in  resigning  robbed  Lytton's  thundercloud  of  its  lightning.  That 
statesman  was  obliged  to  content  himself  with  withdrawing  his  resolution, 
which  he  did  with  certain  intimations  about  the  existence  of  a  remnant  of 
the  peace  party  in  the  ministry  which  might  bear  watching.  Of  course  Mr. 
Disraeli  could  not  allow  such  an  opportunity  to  go  by  unimproved.  When 
Lord  Palmerston  announced  to  the  House  that  Lord  Russell's  resignation 
had  been  in  his  hands  and  declined  before  the  offering  of  the  Lytton  reso- 
lution, and  that  he  (Palmerston)  was  willing  to  stand  with  his  colleague  or 
fall  with  him,  then  Mr.  Disraeli  could  not  forbear.  He  intimated  that  no 
doubt  Lord  Palmerston  was  very  devoted  to  Lord  John  Russell,  but  that  he 
had  managed,  notwithstanding,  to  get  him  out  of  office  !  Of  Lord  Russell 
himself  Mr.  Disraeli  said  :  "  The  noble  lord,  with  the  reputation  of  a  quarter 
of  a  century — a  man  who  for  all  that  time  had  given  a  tone  and  a  color  to 
the  policy  of  this  country,  who  had  met  the  giants  of  other  times  in  debate, 
who  had  measured  rapiers  with  Canning  and  divided  the  public  admiration 
with  Sir  Robert  Peel — had  mysteriously  disappeared,  and  did  not  dare 
to  face  this  motion  ;  while  as  to  the  noble  lord  now  at  the  head  of  the 
cabinet,  he  had  addressed  the  House  that  night  in  a  tone  and  with  accents 
which  showed  that  if  the  honor  and  interests  of  this  country  were  much 
longer  intrusted  to  him  the  first  would  be  tarnished  and  the  last  would  be 
betrayed." 

One  of  the  fighters  of  this  inflamed  and  inflammatory  epoch  was  the 
Honorable  John  Arthur  Roebuck,  whom  the  reader  will  recall  as  the  author 
of  the  successful  resolution  for  a  committee  of  inquiry  on  the  conduct  of 
the  war.  That  committee  at  length  brought  forward  its  report,  and  the 
report  was  so  inculpatory  as  to  warrant  Mr.  Roebuck  in  renewing  his  assault 
upon  the  defunct  ministry  of  the  Earl  of  Aberdeen.  The  committee  found 
that  the  then  existing  government  was  answerable  for  the  hardships, 
exposures,  and  sufferings  of  the  army  during  the  horrible  winter  of  1854-55. 
Mr.  Roebuck  offered  a  vote  of  censure  of  such  character  as  to  include  all  the 
members  of  the  Aberdeen  cabinet.    The  author  of  the  motion  made  an  inflam- 


ACCESSION    OF    PALM  K  USTUN    AND    TREATY    OF    PARIS.  255 

matory  speech.  "It  is  said,"  he  declared,  "  that  we  have  got  rid  of  all  the 
elements  of  the  administration  that  were  mischievous.  That  I  am  very  far 
from  believing.  It  is  also  said,  'Are  not  Aberdeen  and  Newcastle  and  Her- 
bert and  Gladstone  out  ?  And  what  more  can  you  expect  or  do  you  want  } 
Do  you  want  to  see  everybody  punished.?'  I  say  yes;  everyone  who  has 
been  proved  guilty."  The  result,  however,  showed  that  Parliament  was  not 
in  accord  with  Mr.  Roebuck,  whose  motion  was  decisively  defeated. 

On  the  3d  of  August,  1855,  Mr.  Gladstone  again  appeared  in  the  arena 
and  made  a  really  powerful  speech  in  favor  of  peace.  The  bottom  principle 
of  his  argument  was  that  the  further  prosecution  of  the  war  must  be  merely 
for  glory,  or  at  best  to  cover  the  recollection  of  the  diasters  of  the  previous 
winter.  He  showed  that  the  proposition  of  Austria  might  well  be  accepted 
as  a  basis  for  permanent  settlement.  That  was  the  judgment  of  a  disinter- 
ested power.  It  was  not  safe  to  reject  as  unjust  a  measure  proposed  by  a 
neutral  State,  such  as  Austria.  Finally  he  urged  that  it  would  be  outside  of 
the  historical  possibilities  for  the  powers  of  western  Europe  permanently  to 
curtail  the  power  of  Russia  in  the  East.  He  declared  in  his  peroration  that 
his  utterances  were  inspired  by  patriotism  as  it  regarded  his  country,  and 
loyalty  as  it  regarded  his  queen. 

A  few  days  after  this  address  of  Mr.  Gladstone  Parliament  was  pro- 
rogued. Meanwhile  the  war  went  forward  to  its  own  conclusion.  The  cam- 
paign  against  Kertch  was  measurably  successful.  At  the  Tchernaya  the 
P>ench  and  Sardinians  gained  a  great  victory  a  week  after  the  prorogation 
of  Parliament.  Two  months  previously  Lord  Raglan  had  died,  and  was  suc- 
ceeded in  the  command  of  the  British  army  by  General  Simpson.  All  inter- 
est centered  in  the  Crimea,  and  on  the  8th  of  September,  Sebastopol,  as 
already  recounted,  was  taken  and  its  defenses  were  destroyed.  The  success 
of  the  allies  was  sufficient  to  warrant  the  reopening  of  negotiations.  The 
loss  of  Sebastopol  broke  the  purpose  of  the  czar  to  hold  out  longer  against 
the  inevitable. 

At  this  juncture,  we  do  not  doubt,  the  real  obstacle  to  peace  was  the 
feeling  in  Great  Britain  that  her  prestige,  so  much  impaired  by  the  disasters 
which  had  attended  her  arms  in  the  East,  had  not  been  fully  restored  by 
victory.  Nevertheless  the  negotiations  for  a  settlemient  were  renewed  with 
great  earnestness.  The  representatives  of  Great  Britain  at  the  Congress  of 
Paris  were  Lord  Clarendon  and  Lord  Cowley.  Count  Buol,  the  Austrian 
plenipotentiary,  again  led  the  negotiations,  but  the  Congress  was  really  held 
under  the  auspices  of  Napoleon  III.  The  French  emperor  had  by  this  time 
gained  greatly  in  the  good  opinion  of  Europe.  The  French  military  man- 
agement in  the  Crimea  was  contrasted  with  the  mismanagement  of  British 
affairs.  Many  things  combined  to  suggest  Paris  as  the  seat  of  the  Interna- 
tional Congress,  and  there,  on  the   16th  of  January,  1856,  the  sittings  were 


256  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

begun.  The  reascendency  of  the  Bonapartes  was  ilkistratecl  in  the  fact 
that  the  president  of  the  Congress  was  the  French  minister  of  foreign  affairs, 
the  Count  Alexandre  Walewski,  the  natural  son  of  Napoleon  the  Great. 

The  first  result  of  the  negotiations  was  the  agreement  for  an  armistice, 
to  continue  until  the  31st  of  March.  It  was  stipulated  that  unto  this  date 
the  fleets  of  the  powers  at  war  should  hold  their  respective  situations  with- 
out aggression  or  menace  on  either  side.  As  a  matter  of  fact  the  treaty  of 
peace  was  not  concluded  until  the  day  before  the  expiration  of  the  armistice, 
and  the  ratifications  of  the  same  were  not  exchanged  until  the  27th  of  April. 
The  terms  of  the  agreement  were  substantially  these  : 

1.  All  territories  conquered  or  occupied  by  either  party  during  the  war 
to  be  reciprocally  evacuated. 

2.  The  town  and  citadel  of  Kars  and  any  other  parts  of  Turkish  terri- 
tory or  defenses,  of  which  the  Russian  forces  were  possessed,  to  be  restored 
to  the  Ottoman  empire. 

3.  The  four  allied  powers  to  restore  to  Russia  the  towns  and  ports  of 
Sebastopol,  Balaklava,  Kamiesch,  Eupatoria,  Kertch,  Yenikale,  and  Kin- 
burn,  as  well  as  all  other  territories  occupied  by  the  forces  of  the  allies. 

4.  The  allied  powers,  the  Czar  of  Russia,  and  the  Emperor  of  Austria  to 
declare  the  Sublime  Porte  admitted  to  partake  in  the  advantages  of  the  pub- 
lic law  and  system  of  Europe.  The  same  six  powers  also  to  engage,  each 
on  his  part,  to  respect  the  independence  and  territorial  integrity  of  the  Otto- 
man empire;  to  guarantee  in  common  the  strict  observance  of  that  engage- 
ment, and  to  consider  any  act  tending  to  its  violation  as  a  question  of  gen- 
eral interest. 

5.  In  case  of  misunderstanding  between  the  Sublime  Porte  and  one  or 
other  of  the  signatory  powers,  such  as  might  endanger  the  maintenance  of 
their  relations,  the  porte  and  each  of  such  powers,  before  having  recourse  to 
arms,  to  afford  the  other  contracting  parties  an  opportunity  of  mediating 
between  them. 

6.  The  sultan,  having  already  issued  a  firman  for  the  welfare  of  his 
subjects  without  distinction  of  religion  or  race,  and  recording  his  generous 
intentions  toward  the  Christian  population  of  his  empire,  to  communicate  to 
the  contracting  parties  the  said  firman  emanating  spontaneously  from  his 
sovereign  will.  The  contracting  parties,  while  recognizing  the  value  of  this 
communication,  clearly  to  understand  that  it  does  not  give  them  the  right, 
either  collectively  or  separately,  to  interfere  between  the  sultan  and  his  sub- 
jects, or  in  the  internal  administration  of  his  empire.  As  to  the  ancient  rule 
of  the  Ottoman  empire  relative  to  the  closing  of  the  straits  of  the  Bospor  is 
and  the  Dardanelles,  it  is  agreed  that  the  rule  shall  continue  in  force;  that 
no  ships  of  war  belonging  to  foreign  powers  shall  enter  the  straits  of  the 
Dardanelles  or  Bosporus  ;  that  so  long  as  the  porte  is  at  peace  the  sultan 


ACCESSION    OF    PALMERSTON    AND    TREATY    OF    PARIS.  257 

shall  admit  no  foreign  ships  of  war  to  enter  the  said  straits  ;  and,  on  the 
other  hand,  the  powers  engage  to  respect  this  determination  of  the  sultan, 
and  to  conform  themselves  to  the  principle  therein  declared.  The  sultan 
reserves  to  himself  the  right  to  deliver  firmans  of  passage  for  light  vessels 
under  flag  of  war  which  shall  be  employed,  as  is  usual,  in  the  service  of  the 
missions  of  foreign  powers.  The  same  exception  shall  apply  to  the  light 
vessels  under  flag  of  war  which  each  of  the  contracting  powers  is  author- 
ized to  station  at  the  mouths  of  the  Danube  in  order  to  secure  the  execu- 
tion of  the  regulations  relative  to  the  freedom  of  that  river,  the  number  of 
which  vessels  is  not  to  exceed  two  for  each  power. 

7.  It  is  agreed  in  separate  convention,  as  between  Russia  and  Turkey, 
that  each  of  these  two  powers  may  maintain  in  the  Black  Sea  six  steam 
vessels  of  eight  hundred  tons  burden  each,  and  four  light  steam  or  sailing 
vessels  of  not  more  than  two  hundred  tons  burden  each.  The  Aland 
Islands  shall  not  be  fortified,  and  no  military  or  naval  establishment  shall 
be  maintained  or  created  in  those  islands. 

8.  The  Black  Sea  is  neutralized,  and  its  waters  and  ports  are  open  to  the 
merchant  marine  of  every  nation  ;  the  powers  possessing  its  coast  are  inter- 
dicted from  the  use  of  the  flag  of  war  upon  it,  with  such  exceptions  as  Russia 
and  Turkey  may  fix  by  separate  convention.  The  commerce  in  the  ports 
and  waters  of  the  Black  Sea  is  subjected  only  to  regulations  of  health,  customs, 
and  police  ;  and  to  secure  such  commerce  consuls  may  be  admitted  into  the 
ports  on  the  coast,  according  to  the  principles  of  international  law. 

9.  No  toll  shall  be  levied  upon  the  navigation  of  the  Danube,  or  duty 
on  goods  carried  by  vessels  on  that  river.  No  obstacle  shall  be  opposed  to 
the  free  navigation  of  the  river  except  regulations  of  police  and  quarantine. 

10.  The  czar,  as  compensating  for  the  above  concessions,  consents  to 
the  rectification  of  his  frontier  in  Bessarabia.  Said  frontier  shall  begin 
from  the  Black  Sea  one  kilometer  to  the  east  of  Lake  Bourna  Sola,  running 
perpendicularly  to  the  Akerman  road,  following  that  road  to  the  Val  de 
Trajan,  passing  to  the  south  of  Bolgrad,  ascending  the  Yalpuk  to  the  height 
of  Saratsicka,  and  terminating  at  Katamosi,  on  the  Pruth. 

11.  The  territory  ceded  by  Russia  to  be  annexed  to  Moldavia.  The 
inhabitants  of  Moldavia  shall  enjoy  the  rights  and  privileges  secured  to 
the  people  of  the  other  principalities  ;  during  the  space  of  three  years  they 
shall  be  permitted  freely  to  dispose  of  their  property  and  to  transfer  their 
domiciles  elsewhere.  Moldavia  and  Wallachia  are  to  continue,  without 
interference  of  foreign  powers,  under  the  suzerainty  of  the  porte.  The 
porte  engages  to  preserve  for  said  principalities  an  independent  national 
administration  and  full  liberty  of  worship,  of  legislation,  of  trade,  and  of 
navigation.  Servia  shall  be  admitted  to  the  same  rights  and  liberties 
granted  Moldavia  and  Wallachia. 

17 


258  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

To  these  important  conditions  of  peace  certain  other  actions  relating 
to  the  law  of  nations  were  taken  by  the  Congress  of  Paris,  the  effect  of 
which  was  far-reaching  and  salutary  among  the  powers  of  western  Europe. 
Our  own  country  was  asked  to  accept  these  supplementary  rules,  but  re- 
fused to  do  so, perhaps  unwisely.    The  articles  referred  to  were  as  follows: 

1.  Privateering  is  and  remains  abolished. 

2.  The  neutral  flag  covers  the  enemy's  goods,  with  the  exception  of 
contraband  of  war. 

3.  Neutral  goods,  with  the  exception  of  contraband  of  war,  are  not 
liable  to  capture  under  an  enemy's  flag. 

4.  Blockades  in  order  to  be  binding  must  be  effective  ;  that  is,  they 
must  be  maintained  by  an  actual  force  sufficient  to  prevent  access  to  the 
coast  of  the  enemy. 

Such  was  the  treaty  of  1856.  The  news  of  the  armistice  reached  the 
Crimea  on  the  last  day  of  Februar)-.  Hostilities  ceased  on  the  following 
day,  and  the  soldiers  of  the  contending  armies  began  to  fraternize.  On 
the  2d  of  April  the  news  arrived  of  the  treaty  of  peace,  and  the  tidings 
were  received  with  a  joyful  announcement  of  a  hundred  and  one  guns.  On 
the  1 2th  of  the  following  July  Sebastopol  and  Balaklava,  both  in  ruins,  were 
surrendered  to  the  Russians,  and  the  country  was  speedily  evacuated  by 
the  allies.  The  Crimean  War  was  thus  concluded  with  at  least  a  temporary 
reconfirmation  of  the  Ottoman  empire  and  a  like  temporary  check  to  the 
ambitious  projects  of  the  czars. 


LAST    HALF    OF    THE    SLXTH    DECADE.  259 

CHAPTER  XVI. 
Last  Half  of  the  Sixth  Decade. 

HATEVER  governmental  glory  shone  on  England  in  bringing 
to  a  moderately  successful  conclusion  the  Crimean  War  was 
focused  on  Lord  Palmerston.  That  statesman  on  the  31st  of 
March,  1856,  while  questions  of  prosecuting  the  war  were  still 
under  hot  discussion  in  the  Commons,  had  the  honor  to 
announce  to  the  House  that  a  treaty  of  peace  had  been  concluded  at  Paris.  In 
making  the  announcement  he  expressed  his  great  gratification  that  the  terms 
were  such  as  to  be  approved  by  every  loyal  Englishman.  He  informed  the 
House  that  the  treaty  included  the  integrity  and  independence  of  the  Otto- 
man empire  ;  that  all  the  signatory  powers  were  honored  by  the  terms  of 
settlement ;  that  the  conditions  of  peace,  he  believed,  were  permanent  ;  that 
the  British  ambassadors.  Lord  Clarendon  and  Lord  Cowley,  had  upheld  the 
honor,  the  interests,  and  the  dignity  of  their  country,  and  that  they  had  also, 
by  their  diplomatical  conduct  and  statesmanlike  abilities,  won  the  profound 
esteem  of  their  colleagues  in  the  Congress. 

It  is  the  custom  in  the  British  Parliament  on  such  occasions  to  vote  an 
address  to  the  queen,  expressive  of  the  sentiments  of  the  House  and  the 
nation's  approval  of  the  ministerial  policy.  The  address  is  subject  to  dis- 
cussion and  amendment.  In  the  present  instance  there  was  a  lively  debate, 
but  on  the  whole  a  sentiment  of  satisfaction  with  the  terms  of  the  treaty 
was  prevalent.  It  could  not  be  said,  however,  that  the  opinion  in  favor  of  ^ 
the  thino-  done  was  strono^  or  enthusiastic.  The  most  Enorlish  of  the  Eno-lish 
doubted  whether  the  British  army  in  Asia  had  been  permitted  by  victory  to 
recover  its  lost  prestige.  It  was  believed  that  another  campaign  would 
bring  back  the  wonted  glory  to  the  banner  of  St.  George. 

Most  of  the  speeches  on  the  address  to  the  queen  were  those  of  appro- 
bation and  applause,  but  the  enthusiasm  did  not  run  high.  Several  of  the 
speakers  put  themselves  in  the  attitude  of  saying,  This  is  all  very  well,  but 
Ave  are  glad  it  is  over!  and  we  are  opposed  to  any  other  such  war.  This 
voice  found  its  best  utterance  in  a  speech  by  Milner  Gibson,  who  quoted  a 
witty  and  ironical  letter  of  Sidney  Smith  to  Lady  Grey.  The  humorist, 
speaking  sarcastically  of  the  merits  of  foreign  interference  in  the  affairs  of 
nations,  said  to  his  correspondent :  "  For  God's  sake  do  not  drag  me  into 
another  war.  I  am  worn  down  and  worn  out  with  crusading  and  defending 
Europe  and  protecting  mankind;  I  must  think  a  little  of  myself.  I  am 
sorry  for  the  Spaniards  ;  I  am  sorry  for  the  Greeks;  I  deplore  the  fate  of 
the  Jews  ;  the  people  of  the  Sandwich  Islands  are  groaning  under  the  most 
detestable  tyranny;   Bagdad  is  oppressed  ;  I  do  not  like  the  present  state  of 


26o  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAxM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

the  Delta;  Thibet  is  not  comfortable.  Am  I  to  fight  for  all  these  people? 
No  war,  dear  Lady  Grey  !  I  beseech  you  secure  Lord  Grey's  sword  and 
pistols,  as  the  housekeeper  did  Don  Quixote's  armor.  If  there  is  another 
war  life  will  not  be  worth  having.  .  .  .  May  the  vengeance  of  Heaven  over- 
take all  the  legitimates  of  \'erona  !  but,  in  the  present  state  of  rent  and 
taxes,  they  must  be  left  to  the  vengeance  of  Heaven.  I  allow  fighting  in 
such  a  cause  to  be  a  luxury  ;  but  the  business  of  a  prudent,  sensible  man  is 
to  guard  against  luxury  !" 

As  for  Mr.  Gladstone,  we  may  allow  that  the  three  preceding  years  of 
his  life  had  been  unfavorable  to  his  fame.  On  the  whole,  his  genius  was 
never  warlike.  Rather  was  it  businesslike,  statesmanlike.  We  may  see  in 
the  retrospect  that  his  great  mind  while  he  was  occupied  with  his  duties  as 
chancellor  of  the  exchequer  dwelt  upon  the  disadvantages  and  mortal  hurt 
of  war  to  the  prosperity  of  the  British  nation.  War  is  waste,  destruction 
alike  of  life  and  property.  Dwelling  on  this  view  of  the  case.  It  Is  likely 
that  In  the  ministry  of  Lord  Aberdeen  he  did  not  press  the  military  man- 
agement to  the  limit  of  efficiency.  There  were  halfway  measures  and 
measures  of  expediency,  neither  of  which  can  be  brooked  by  the  genius  of 
war.  Perhaps  the  statesman  himself  felt  this  defect  (or  shall  we  call  it 
merit.'*)  of  his  own  character  and  method.  In  any  event  he  presently  found 
himself  on  the  defensive.  He  made  one  ill-timed  and  costly  speech  when 
replying  to  Disraeli  on  his  resolution  of  May  25,  1855.  Later  In  the  year 
he  spoke  again  to  better  advantage  on  Roebuck's  inflammatory  measure, 
and  with  still  greater  success  on  the  address  proposed  to  her  majesty  on  the 
occasion  of  the  treaty  of  peace. 

Mr.  Gladstone  In  this  speech  found  opportunity  to  traverse  nearly  the 
whole  of  his  own  relations  to  the  Crimean  War,  and  to  Illustrate  his  views 
thereon.  He  had  been  blamed  much  for  his  place  and  part  In  the  Aberdeen 
ministry.  He  proclaimed  himself  an  independent  member  of  the  House  of 
Commons.  He  said  that  the  question  on  which  he  was  speaking,  namely,  a 
proposed  amendment  to  substitute  the  word  "satisfaction"  for  the  word 
"joy"  in  the  address  to  her  majesty  was  not  a  great  question.  He  consid- 
ered the  treaty  of  Paris  an  honorable  settlement  The  ends  had  been 
reached  for  which  the  war  was  undertaken.  He  dwelt  In  particular  on  the 
allegation  that  the  signatory  powers  had  agreed  to  maintain  In  its  integrity 
the  Ottoman  empire.  He  wished  to  Inquire  whether  the  agreement  signi- 
fied only  that  the  powers  were  pledged  to  support  the  political  government 
of  the  sultan,  or  did  It  mean  that  they  were  bound  to  uphold  Turkey  as  a 
Mohammedan  State  } 

At  the  latter  suggestion  all  of  Mr.  Gladstone's  sentiments  rebelled. 
He  was  a  man  of  the  Church  of  England.  "  If  I  thought,  sir,"  said  he,  "  that 
this  treaty  of  peace  is  to  be  an  instrument  which  binds  this  country  and  our 


LAST    HALF    OF    THE    SIXTH    DECADE. 


261 


262  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    CJLADSTONE. 

posterity,  as  well  as  our  allies,  to  the  maintenance  of  a  set  of  institutions  in 
Turkey  which  you  are  endeavoring  to  reform  if  you  can,  but  with  respect  to 
which  endeavor  few  can  be  sanguine,  I  should  not  be  content  to  fall  back 
upon  the  amendment  of  my  noble  friend  [substituting  'satisfaction'  for 
'joy'  in  the  address  to  the  queen],  expressing  that  I  regard  the  peace  with 
satisfaction  ;  but  on  the  contrary  I  should  look  out  for  the  most  emphatic 
word  in  which  to  express  my  sense  of  condemnation  of  a  peace  which  binds 
us  to  maintain  the  law  and  institutions  of  Turkey  as  a  Mohammedan  State. 
,  .  .  The  juxtaposition  of  a  people  professing  the  Mohammedan  religion 
with  the  rising  Christian  population  having  adverse  and  conflicting 
influences  presents  difficulties  which  are  not  to  be  overcome  by  certain 
diplomatists,  at  certain  hours,  and  in  a  certain  place.  It  will  be  the  work  and 
care  of  many  generations — if  even  then  they  may  be  successful — to  bring 
that  state  of  things  to  a  happy  and  prosperous  conclusion.  But  there  is 
another  danger — the  danger  of  encroachment  upon,  and  the  absorption  of, 
Turkey  by  Russia,  which  may  bring  upon  Europe  evils  not  less  formidable 
than  those  which  already  exist.  Such  a  danger  to  the  peace,  liberties,  and 
privileges  of  all  Europe  we  are  called  upon  absolutely  to  resist  by  all  the 
means  in  our  power." 

The  criticisms  of  the  speaker  next  extended  to  the  point  that  the  Con- 
gress of  Paris  had  not  secured  to  Moldavia  and  Wallachia  an  independent 
existence.  He  conceded,  however,  that  Great  Britain  and  France  could 
hardly  have  secured  this  desideratum.  As  to  the  Black  Sea,  the  speaker 
feared  that  in  time  of  peace  the  neutralization  of  those  waters  would  be  of 
no  effect,  while  in  time  of  war  the  neutralization  would  not  be  effectiv'e, 
because  it  was  in  the  nature  of  war  to  break  through  an  agreement  of  this 
kind.  Furthermore,  the  Congress  ought  to  have  adopted  strict  rules  under 
which  the  signatory  powers  might  proceed  when  interfering  in  behalf  of 
oppressed  Christian  populations. 

The  movement  of  the  Congress  toward  arbitration  the  speaker  heartily 
approved.  There  was  danger,  however,  that  arbitration — the  right  of  arbi- 
tration— might  be  used  by  weak  and  unjust  States  as  a  cloak  for  conten- 
tions which  were  devoid  of  truth  and  justice.  Great  nations,  nations  recog- 
nizing international  justice,  might  thus  be  harassed  with  claims  and  pretexts 
of  not  sufficient  merit  to  demand  arbitration  or  any  other  remedy  except 
the  sword,  in  case  such  causes  should  be  pressed  to  extremes.  The  great 
advantage  of  arbitration  was  without  doubt  the  impetus  which  it  gave  to 
the  movement  for  reducing  the  military  establishments  of  Europe.  These 
establishments  were  an  incubus  on  civilization.  If  the  powers  represented  at 
Paris  could  under  the  leadership  of  England,  followed  by  France  and  Russia, 
promote  the  reduction  to  a  minimum  of  the  great  military  establishments 
of  Europe,  then  the  work  done  would  be  fraught  with  happiness  to  mankind. 


LAST    HALF    OP^    THE    SIXTH    DECADE.  263 

The  speaker  in  the  next  place  discussed  at  considerable  length  one  of 
the  protocols  adopted  by  the  Congress.  He  was  anxious,  he  said,  to  know 
what  was  the  exact  meaning  of  the  particular  protocol  relative  to  the  posi- 
tion of  those  States  not  represented  at  the  conference.  He  took  up  the 
somewhat  informal  declaration  of  the  plenipotentiaries  favorable  to  the  sup- 
pression of  the  freedom  of  the  press  in  Belgium,  and  strenuously  opposed 
the  principle  and  tendency  of  such  declaration.  England  could  never  con- 
sent to  be  a  party  to  the  restriction  of  the  freedom  of  the  press.  He 
regretted  to  note  that  several  of  the  ambassadors  had  openly  declared  them- 
selves in  favor  of  bridling  the  Belgium  press,  as  though  the  Belgian  Consti- 
tution did  not  provide  for  the  correction  of  abuses  of  the  kind  complained 
of  "  I  wish,"  said  the  speaker,  "  to  point  out  as  clearly  as  it  is  possible  for 
an  independent  member  of  Parliament  to  do  that  this  appeal  to  a  people 
gallant  and  high-spirited  as  the  Belgians  are — an  appeal  which  appears  to 
be  contemplated  under  the  compulsion  of  foreign  and  some  of  them  remote 
powers,  and  having  for  its  object  the  limitation  by  the  Belgians  of  their  own 
dearest  rights  and  most  cherished  liberties — is  not  a  policy  which  tends  to 
clear  the  political  horizon,  but  rather  one  which  will  darken  and  disturb  it 
and  cast  gloom  and  despondency  over  a  prospect  otherwise  brilliant  and 
joyous." 

The  debate  ended  with  a  speech  by  Lord  Palmerston  and  with  the 
adoption  of  the  unmodified  address  to  the  queen.  And  thus  closed  the  par- 
liamentary agitation  relative  to  the  treaty  of  Paris  and  the  Crimean  War  of 

1854-55- 

The  attention  of  the  House  of  Commons  was  at  once  turned  to  ques- 
tions of  home  policy,  more  particularly  to  the  subject  of  the  educational 
system  of  the  kingdom.  We  may  refer  to  this  period  the  beginning  of  the 
agitation  which  was  subsequently  'so  greatly  promoted  by  William  E. 
Forster,  vice  president  of  the  committee  of  the  council  on  education  in  the 
ministry  of  Gladstone,  1868-74.  It  was  under  Lord  Palmerston  and  at  the 
hands  of  Lord  John  Russell  that  just  after  the  close  of  the  Crimean  War  a 
resolution  was  offered  providing  for  an  addition  of  eighty  subinspectors  to 
the  body  then  existing  in  the  kingdom.  It  was  to  be  the  duty  of  the  sub; 
inspectors  to  report  a  method  and  means  for  the  education  of  the  poor  in 
each  district.  The  same  measure  provided  for  enlarging  the  powers  of  the 
commissioners  of  the  charitable  trusts  and  for  making  available  the  funds 
that  were  then  lying  idle  in  the  hands  of  the  trusts.  The  resolution  also 
called  for  a  law  giving  to  taxpayers  the  right  of  taxing  themselves  locally 
for  the  support  of  schools  ;  also  a  provision  that  the  employers  of  children 
between  the  ages  of  nine  and  fifteen  years  should  be  obliged  to  furnish  them 
schooling  for  half  of  each  year  within  the  limits  named. 

This  measure  of  Lord  Russell's  was  first  presented  in  the   House  in 


264  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

April  of  1856.  Upon  the  question  Mr.  Gladstone  spoke,  not  unwilling  to 
attack  whatever  was  vulnerable  in  a  measure  proposed  by  Lord  Russell. 
He,  the  speaker,  strenuously  opposed  the  principles  upon  which  the  Russell 
resolutions  were  offered.  They  were  not  really  founded  on  the  principle  of 
the  local  autonomy  of  schools  as  opposed  to  the  principle  of  a  central  con- 
trol. They  were  not  really  founded  on  the  assumption  of  a  moral  and  reli- 
o-ious  initiative  in  the  schools,  but  rather  favored  the  secular  initiative.  Mr. 
Gladstone  declared  that  in  Great  Britain  the  exactly  opposite  principles, 
namely,  the  principle  of  the  local  autonomy  of  the  schools  and  the  principle 
of  the  moral  initiative,  ought  to  prevail.  The  speaker  held  that  the  volun- 
tary system  of  education  is  essentially  correct,  and  certainly  English  in  its 
character.  Should  the  opposing  system  be  substituted  he  believed  it  would 
degenerate  into  irreligion.  He  also  held  that  the  propositions  of  Lord  John 
Russell  were  of  doubtful  constitutionality.  Whether  they  were  constitu- 
tional or  not,  they  were  of  a  dangerous  character  because  they  tended 
inevitably  to  centralization  and  the  substitution  of  secular  lor  religious 
education. 

The  contention  of  Mr.  Gladstone  prevailed  with  the  House.  Lord 
Russell's  resolutions  failed  of  adoption.  Nor  may  the  reader  omit  to  notice 
the  identity  of  Gladstone's  argument  with  the  views  which  he  expressed  in 
his  celebrated  inaugural  address  at  the  collegiate  institution  in  Liverpool,  in 
the  year  1843.  ^^  ^^^^  time,  when  the  speaker  was  but  thirty-four  years  of 
acre,  he  declared  that  merely  secular  education,  applied  even  to  such  a  mind 
as  that  of  Newton,  would  fail  of  its  sovereign  purpose,  and  would  leave  the 
possessor  "  in  the  ignorance  which  we  all  declare  ourselves  to  commiserate, 
and  which  it  is  the  object  of  this  institution  to  assist  in  removing  from  the 
land."  Now,  at  the  age  of  forty-seven,  his  doctrine  was  still  the  same — a 
fact  which  strongly  illustrates  the  underlying  conservatism  of  Gladstone's 
mind,  especially  on  all  subjects  relating  to  the  religious  order  of  society. 

Notwithstanding  the  urgency  of  Gladstone,  while  chancellor  of  the 
exchequer,  that  the  revenues  of  the  kingdom  should  be  made  to  meet  even 
the  extraordinary  expenditures  of  war  year  by  year,  it  was  found  at  the 
close  of  the  recent  conflict  that  a  debt  of  about  five  million  pounds  had 
accrued  for  the  last  year,  and  that  many  times  as  much  was  impending 
before  the  account  could  be  balanced.  Mr.  George  Cornewall  Lewis  had 
now  the  office  of  chancellor  of  the  exchequer,  and  his  budget  for  1856 
recommended  a  loan  of  five  millions  sterling. 

In  presenting  his  budget  Mr.  Lewis  gave  the  usual  detailed  account 
of  expenditures,  amounting  to  a  little  more  than  eighty-nine  millions  ster- 
ling, with  an  income  of  not  quite  sixty-six  millions  to  meet  it.  There  was  a 
disposition  in  the  House  to  refer  this  unfavorable  showing  to  the  illiberal 
management  of  the  finances  during  Gladstone's  period  of  responsibility  in 


LAST    HALF    OF    THE    SL\TH    DECADE,  265 

the  Aberdeen  ministry.  This  intimation  the  ex-chancellor  resented.  He 
repelled  the  charge  that  the  unsuccess  of  the  British  arms  in  the  East  and 
the  hardships  to  which  the  soldiery  had  been  subjected  were  the  results  of 
parsimony  or  incapacity  in  the  former  administration  of  the  departments  ot 
war  and  the  treasury.  He  was  of  the  opinion  that  Sir  George  Cornewall 
Lewis  had  made  his  estimates  for  income  too  liberal  and  for  expenditures 
too  small  ;  also  that  the  margin  which  the  chancellor  allowed  for  surplus 
was  wholly  insufficient.  Again  he  declared  emphatically  that  it  was  the 
duty  of  the  nation  in  each  crisis  to  meet  it  with  a  sufficient  annual  increase 
in  revenues,  and  not  to  "  set  the  pestilent  example  of  abolishing  taxes  and 
borrowing  money  in  their  stead." 

It  is  within  the  memory  of  men  still  living  that  the  relations  of  Great 
Britain  to  our  government  were  shaken  to  the  point  of  complaint  and 
animosity  by  the  conduct  of  the  former  at  the  time  of  the  Crimean  War. 
The  thing  complained  of  by  the  American  people  was  the  Foreign  Enlist- 
ment Act.  Mr.  Crampton,  the  British  ambassador,  came  to  America  and, 
by  the  agency  of  three  consuls,  opened  recruiting  offices,  offering  induce- 
ments to  American  citizens  to  enlist  in  the  British  service  ;  and  many  did 
enlist.  The  result  was  a  serious  complaint  against  the  British  minister,  who 
had  concealed  from  our  government  the  work  in  which  he  was  engaged. 
On  the  30th  of  June,  1856,  a  resolution  was  offered  in  the  House  of  Com- 
mons declaring,  "  That  the  conduct  of  her  majesty's  government  in  the  dif- 
ferences that  have  arisen  between  them  and  the  government  of  the  United 
States  on  the  question  of  enlistment  has  not  entitled  them  [the  govern- 
ment] to  the  approbation  of  this  House." 

On  this  question  Mr.  Gladstone  spoke  in  condemnation  of  the  course 
pursued  by  the  ministry.  "  I  am  bound  to  say,"  said  he,  "  that  neither  has 
a  cordial  understanding  with  America  been  preserved  nor  the  honor  and 
fame  of  England  upheld  in  this  matter.  I  am  bound  to  say  that  in  regard 
to  neither  of  these  points  am  I  satisfied  with  the  existing  state  of  things 
or  with  the  conduct  of  her  majesty's  government.  A  cordial  understanding 
with  America  has  not  been  preserved,  and  the  honor  of  this  country  has 
been  compromised.  The  speaker  opposed,  however,  the  adoption  of  such 
resolutions  as  that  before  the  House,  unless,  indeed,  it  was  the  purpose  of 
the  House  to  substitute  a  new  government  for  the  existing  one.  Other- 
wise the  mere  declaration  of  an  opinion  must  work  more  harm  than  good. 
The  speaker  acknowledged  that  Great  Britain  had  been  in  the  wrong,  that 
her  agents  had  broken  faith  with  the  government  of  the  United  States  ; 
but  he  held  that  Mr.  Crampton  had  only  acted  in  accordance  with  the  pre- 
scribed policy  of  his  government.  Mr,  Crampton  could  not  be  condemned 
without  condemning  the  government  also.  It  was  inconsistent  to  punish 
the  British  ambassador  and  his  three  subordinates,  as  had  been  done,  when 


266  LIFE    ANJ)    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

their  actions  were  the  direct  result  of  orders  which  they  had  received  and 
were  indeed  indorsed  by  the  government  that  had  sent  the  ambassador  and 
the  British  consuls  to  America. 

Finally  the  speaker  broke  into  a  memorable  passage,  in  which  he 
referred  in  a  tone  of  deprecation  to  the  chaotic  condition  of  political  senti- 
ment and  action  in  the  House  of  Commons.  He  referred,  by  way  of  con- 
trast, to  the  efficiency  and  solidarity  which  had  formerly  been  manifested  in 
the  party  divisions  of  the  House.  "  I  believe,"  said  he,  "that  the  day  for 
this  country  will  be  a  happy  day  when  party  combinations  shall  be  restored 
on  such  a  footing-  as  they  occupied  in  the  times  of  Sir  Robert  Peel.  But 
this  question,  instead  of  being  a  party  question,  is  a  most  remarkable  illus- 
tration of  the  disorganized  state  of  parties  and  of  the  consequent  impo- 
tency  of  the  House  of  Commons  to  express  a  practical  opinion  with  respect 
to  the  foreign  policy  of  the  country.  Under  these  circumstances  the  only 
resource  left  to  me  is  the  undisguised  expression  of  the  opinions  which  I 
strongly  and  conscientiously  (perhaps  erroneously)  feel  after  the  study  of 
these  papers  [the  papers  relating  to  the  trouble  with  the  United  States]. 
I  have  had  the  privilege  of  expressing  these  opinions  freely  and  strongly,  a 
privilege  which  I  would  not  have  waived  on  any  account  when  I  consider 
the  bearing  of  the  case  with  respect  to  the  American  alliance,  which  I  so 
highly  prize,  or  with  respect  to  that  which  I  still  more  highly  prize  and 
more  dearly  love — the  honor  and  fair  fame  of  my  countr)." 

It  remained  for  the  year  1857  to  witness  the  nearest  approximation 
ever  made  of  the  lives  and  policies  of  \V.  E.  Gladstone  and  Benjamin  Dis- 
raeli. Neither  was  in  office.  Both  were  carrying  free  lances  in  the  House^ 
and  each  no  doubt  was  awaiting  his  time  and  his  opportunity.  The  life 
lines  of  the  two  men,  like  lines  of  railway  far  apart  in  most  places  and 
diverging  finally  to  infinity,  came  nearly  together  at  the  opening  of  Parlia- 
ment in  January,  1857.  There  was  the  usual  address  to  the  crown,  and  the 
customary  debate  thereon.  Mr.  Disraeli,  ever  vigilant  on  such  occasions, 
gave  a  sharp  review  of  the  address,  marked  with  his  usual  precision  and 
illustrated  with  his  apt  aphorisms  respecting  the  proposed  address.  To 
these  criticisms  Lord  Palmerston  in  his  answer  did  not  reply,  but  passed 
them  over  in  silence.  This  was  unusual,  and  was  noted  by  Mr.  Gladstone, 
who  took  up  the  debate  with  the  inquiry  why  it  was  that  the  chancellor  of 
the  exchequer  had  not  given  courteous  notice  of  answer  to  the  charges  of 
Mr.  Disraeli  touching  the  foreign  affairs  of  Great  Britain.  For  the  nonce 
the  rare  spectacle  was  witnessed  of  the  one  speaking  fo7^  the  other.  Mr. 
Gladstone  said  that  the  address  could  not  be  appropriate  if  the  charges 
made  by  Mr.  Disraeli  were  true;  and  if  they  were  not  true  then  they  ought 
to  be  refuted.  The  address  from  the  throne  had  not  given  to  the  House,  and 
had  not  promised  to  give,  certain  information  of  great  importance  relative  to 


LAST    HALF    OF    THE    SIXTH    DECADE.  267 

the  treaty  of  Paris.  The  address  had  not  referred  to  the  facts  of  the  Per- 
sian War  or  given  the  terms  of  settlement  of  the  difficulty  with  Central 
America.  The  speaker  thought  that  the  recent  disastrous  break  with  China 
ought  to  have  been  noticed  in  different  terms.  Certainly  the  country  had  a 
right  to  know  also  who  was  responsible  for  the  war  with  Persia.  Was  it 
the  directors  of  the  East  India  Company,  or  was  the  government  behind  the 
company  in  this  measure  ?  Who  was  to  provide  for  the  expenditures  of  the 
conflict.  If  Great  Britain  must  pay  the  bills  then  Parliament  ought  to  have 
convened  at  an  earlier  date. 

The  address,  moreover,  touched  upon  the  Bank  of  England,  and  referred 
to  the  renewal  of  the  act  of  1844.  The  speaker  wished  to  know  whether  that 
act  was  continued  in  its  identical  form,  and,  if  so,  whether  the  House  should 
not  have  had  the  privilege  of  amendment.  The  speaker  next  took  up  the 
question  of  the  income  tax.  He  himself  had  been  partly  responsible  for 
that  tax,  and  also  for  the  promise  that  the  same  should  be  extinguished  by 
the  year  i860.  One  of  two  things  must  now  be  done — there  must  be  a 
new  scheme  of  taxation  or  another  loan  by  the  government.  For  his  own 
part  he  was  not  willing  to  take  either  horn  of  the  dilemma.  Per  contra,  he 
was  firmly  convinced  that  the  proper  method  was  to  reduce  expenditures 
until  they  should  be  brought  to  the  level  of  the  revenue. 

Mr,  Gladstone  then  referred  to  the  false  charge  that  the  income  tax  of 
1853  had  been  obtained  by  a  bargain  with  other  interests.  He  denied  that 
the  government  was  complicated  in  that  matter.  "  The  pledge  of  the 
government,"  said  he,  "  referred  mainly  to  something  that  was  to  take 
place  in  i860.  Four  years  of  the  seven  have  passed  away.  It  is  to  my 
mind  reasonable  and  just  that  the  right  honorable  gentleman  [Lord  Pai- 
merston]  on  behalf  of  his  friends,  and  that  every  man  on  his  own  behalf  and 
on  behalf  of  his  constituents,  should  acknowledge  the  duty  of  the  House  of 
Commons  to  say  now  in  1857  whether  the  pledges  of  1853  are  or  are  not  to 
be  fulfilled.  .  .  .  As  far  as  my  duty  is  concerned  it  will  be  my  effort  and 
labor  to  secure  a  fulfillment  of  the  pledges  given  in  1853.  I  understand 
those  pledges  as  the  right  honorable  gentleman  understands  them.  I  have 
not  forgotten  them.  I  never  can  forget  to  the  latest  day  of  my  life,  and  I 
shall  always  remember  with  gratitude  the  conduct  of  the  House  of  Com- 
mons at  the  period  when  these  measures  were  adopted,  and  the  generosity 
of  the  sentiments  which  they  evinced.  I  must  endeavor  to  answer  that  con- 
duct at  least  so  far  as  depends  on  me  ;  and  I  shall  endeavor  to  answer  that 
conduct  by  striving  to  bring  the  expenditure  of  the  country  and  its  fiscal 
arrangements  into  such  a  shape  as  will  allow  the  extinction  of  the  income 
tax  in  i860." 

The  debate  on  the  address  was  not  sufficiently  adverse  to  prevent  its 
adoption.     The  discussion  of  the  budget  for  1857  was  still  more  important. 


268  LIFE    AND    TIMKS    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

Sir  G.  C.  Lewis  included  in  his  scheme  the  continuance  of  the  income  tax 
to  the  year  i860  at  the  rate  of  sevenpence  the  pound.  It  was  thought  that 
this  source  would  yield  about  twenty-one  millions  sterling  in  revenue.  As 
against  the  retention  of  this  tax  certain  other  taxes  were  remitted.  The 
scheme  was  so  computed  as  to  show  that  if  it  were  carried  out  the  whole 
debt  (about  forty  million  pounds)  incurred  by  the  recent  war  would  be 
liquidated  in  a  period  of  twenty  years. 

The  budget  was  presented  on  the  13th  of  February,  and  a  week  later 
Mr.  Disraeli  offered  the  following  amendment :  "  That  it  would  be  expedient 
before  sanctioning  the  financial  arrangements  for  the  ensuing  year  to  adjust 
the  estimated  income  and  expenditure  in  a  manner  which  shall  appear  best 
calculated  to  secure  the  country  against  the  risk  of  a  deficiency  in  the  years 
1858-59  and  1859-60,  and  to  provide  for  such  a  balance  of  revenue  and 
charge  respectively  in  the  year  i860  as  may  place  it  in  the  power  of  Parlia- 
ment at  that  period  without  embarrassment  to  the  finances  altogether  to 
remit  the  income  tax."  To  this  amendment  the  principal  debate  was 
directed.  Mr.  Disraeli  averred  that  it  was  not  his  purpose  to  assail  the  gov- 
ernment by  offering  a  vote  of  want  of  confidence  either  directly  or  indirectly. 
Neither  was  it  his  wish  to  injure  the  public  credit.  He  did  not  propose  any 
scheme  of  his  own  as  against  that  offered  by  the  chancellor  of  the  exchequer. 
He  desired  only  to  secure  a  certain  end,  namely,  the  sufficiency  of  the  rev- 
enues for  the  ensuing  three  years  and  the  final  remission  of  the  income  tax 
in  i860.  To  this  the  chancellor  of  the  exchequer  replied  that  both  of  the 
ends  sought  for  by  the  honorable  gentleman  would  be  compassed  anyhow— 
that  the  budget  had  respect  to  the  very  things  inquired  for,  and  was  suf- 
ficient. 

We  may  perceive  in  the  retrospect  that  Mr.  Gladstone  was  keenly  alive, 
perhaps  sensitive,  to  whatever  measures  in  the  financial  management  of  the 
kingdom  seemed  to  traverse  those  of  which  he  had  been  the  champion  when 
in  office.  He  therefore  spoke  often,  criticising  those  policies  which  departed 
from  his  own.  The  budget  of  Sir  G.  C.  Lewis  had  been  excogitated  from 
principles  almost  diametrically  opposed  to  those  which  governed  the  treas- 
ury when  Mr.  Gladstone  was  chancellor  of  the  exchequer.  Speaking  to  the 
budget,  or  rather  to  Mr.  Disraeli's  amendment,  Gladstone  called  attention  to 
the  fact  that  the  aim  of  treasury  management  had  long  been  to  simplify  and 
consolidate  the  financial  laws  of  the  realm.  The  present  chancellor  of  the 
exchequer,  departing  from  this  theory,  had  presented  a  scheme  more  compli- 
cated than  ever  before.  As  to  the  income  tax,  that  burden  had  been  assented 
to  during  his  own  administration  because  of  the  necessity  that  was  on  the 
nation.  Then  the  highest  motives  existed  for  retaining  a  tax  that  was  inim- 
ical  to  the  spirit  of  British  institutions.  Now  no  such  motive  existed.  The 
people  had  expected  that  the  tax  would  be  reduced  and  soon  remitted  alto- 


LAST    HALF    OF    THE    SL\TH    DECADE.  269 

gether.  The  estimate  which  the  chancellor  of  the  exchequer  held  out  of  a 
reduction  of  nearly  twelve  millions  the  speaker  considered  delusive.  The 
real  reduction  would  hardly  exceed  four  and  a  half  millions,  and  when  this 
was  reduced  by  the  amount  of  the  proposed  tea  tax  the  actual  reduction 
would  be  found  but  little  more  than  three  millions.  For  his  own  part  he 
should  insist  that  the  income  tax  should,  according  to  the  promise  made  in 
1853,  be  wholly  remitted  by  the  year  i860.  He  claimed  that  the  principal 
error  in  the  budget  was  an  allowance  for  excessive  .expenditures.  He 
thought  that  the  estimates  for  expenditure  ought  to  be  revised  and  radi- 
cally reduced.  He  would  call  attention  of  the  House  to  the  fact  that  within 
the  last  quadrennium  the  aggregate  of  expenditures,  apart  from  the  burden 
of  the  war,  had  been  in  excess  of  those  before  the  time  named  by  at  least  six 
million  pounds.  The  chancellor  of  the  exchequer  had  presumed  to  estimate 
the  revenue  for  future  years,  but  had  shrunk  from  making  an  estimate  of  the 
expenditures. 

The  speaker  then  went  on  to  give  his  own  estimates  for  both  revenue 
and  expenditure  up  to  the  year  i860.  Then,  by  way  of  retrospect  and  as 
illustrative  of  the  fidelity  of  his  memory  to  the  political  party  under  whose 
aegis  he  had  risen  to  fame,  he  said:  "  In  Sir  Robert  Peel's  time  you  were 
called  upon  to  remit  a  million  four  hundred  thousand  pounds  of  indirect 
taxes,  now  you  are  called  on  to  impose  indirect  taxes  to  that  amount ;  then 
you  were  called  on  to  fill  up  a  deficiency  at  your  own  cost,  now  you  are 
called  on  to  create  a  deficiency  at  the  cost  of  others  ;  you  were  then  called 
upon  to  take  a  burden  on  yourselves  to  relieve  the  great  mass  of  your 
fellow-countrymen,  now  you  are  called  upon  to  take  a  burden  off  the 
shoulders  of  the  wealthier  classes  in  order  that  you  may  impose  indirect 
taxes  upon  the  tea  and  sugar  which  are  consumed  by  every  laboring  family 
in  the  country.  I  can  only  say  that  for  my  own  part  I  entertain  on  this  sub- 
ject a  most  decided  opinion,  and  nothing  shall  induce  me  to  refrain  from 
giving  every  constitutional  opposition  in  my  power  to  such  a  proposition. 
Before  the  speaker  leaves  the  chair,  if  health  and  strength  be  spared  me,  I 
shall  invite  the  House  to  declare  that  whatever  taxes  we  remove  we  will 
not  impose  more  duties  upon  the  tea  and  sugar  of  the  workingman.  When 
we  are  in  committee  there  will  be  no  other  opportunities  of  renewing  this 
protest.  These  things,  if  they  are  to  be  done,  shall  at  least  not  be  done  in 
a  corner.  The  light  of  day  shall  be  let  in  upon  them,  and  their  meaning  and 
consequences  shall  be  well  understood.  .  .  .  No  consideration  upon  earth 
would  induce  me  by  voice  or  by  vote  to  be  a  party  to  a  financial  plan  with 
regard  to  which  I  feel  that  it  undermines  the  policy  which  has  guided  the 
course  of  every  great  and  patriotic  minister  in  this  country,  and  which  is 
intimately  associated,  not  only  with  the  credit  and  with  the  honor,  but  even 
with  the  safety  of  the  country." 


270  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    CiLADSTONE. 

Such  was  the  tenor  of  the  debates  about  the  financial  management  at 
this  epoch  in  parHamentary  history.  Sir  G.  C.  Lewis's  budget  was  accepted. 
That  minister  then  went  forward  and  moved  for  a  reduction,  by  a  sHding 
scale,  of  the  duty  on  tea.  To  this  Mr.  Gladstone  amended  by  a  proposition 
for  still  greater  reduction  ;  and  to  his  amendment  he  made  a  speech  on  the 
6th  of  March,  1857.  The  purport  of  his  argument  was  that  artcles  of  pop- 
ular consumption  ought  to  be  relieved  from  taxation.  This  he  contended 
had  been  the  British  principle  of  economy,  and  he  regretted  to  see  the 
chancellor  of  the  exchequer  endeavoring  to  substitute  another  system.  The 
speaker  still  claimed  that  the  right  way  to  amend  the  present  situation  was 
by  a  reduction  of  expenditures.  This  must  be  done.  The  chancellor  of  the 
exchequer  had  been  able  to  figure  out  for  the  ensuing  year  a  surplus  of  only 
eight  hundred  thousand  pounds.  Now  that  minister  was  moving  for  a 
reduction  on  tea  to  the  extent  of  an  aggregate  of  a  half  a  million  pounds. 
This  would  leave  him  with  only  three  hundred  thousand  pounds  of  surplus, 
even  if  his  estimates  should  hold  good.  But  they  would  not  hold  good. 
The  minister  had  taken  no  account  of  expenditures  necessary  on  the  score 
of  the  war  with  Persia  and  the  war  with  China.  Finally,  the  speaker  said 
that  the  present  opportunity  was  a  good  one  for  moving  a  thorough  reform 
in  the  management  of  the  finances  of  the  kingdom. 

The  result  of  the  debate  showed  that  the  ministry  of  Palmerston  was 
thoroughly  intrenched,  and  could  not  be  moved  with  argument.  The  vote 
of  the  House  accepted  the  budget.  The  debate  broke  out  anew,  however, 
when  it  came  to  the  consideration  of  the  supplemental  scheme  for  reducing 
the  tax  on  tea.  On  this  subject  Mr.  Gladstone  again  spoke,  though  he 
could  not  hope  to  prevail  against  the  policy  of  the  government.  Two  or  three 
other  questions  also  demanded  his  attention.  One  of  these  was  the  report  of 
the  committee  of  supplies  for  the  navy.  Once  more  Mr.  Gladstone  urged 
the  reduction  of  expenditures.  He  adduced  figures  to  show  that  the  expenses 
of  the  military  and  naval  establishments  were  rising  rapidly  from  year  to 
year.  Unless  expenditures  should  be  reduced  there  must  inevitably  come 
a  deficiency.  Sir  G.  C.  Lewis,  however,  was  able  by  argument  and  assertion 
to  support  the  report  of  the  committee,  and  the  same  was  accepted  by  the 
House. 

At  this  session  Mr.  Gladstone  also  distinguished  himself  by  defending 
in  a  conspicuous  manner  the  equality  of  woman  with  man  as  it  respected 
her  rights  under  marriage.  A  divorce  bill  had  been  presented  modifying 
somewhat  the  existing  law,  but  hardly  abating  the  atrocious  discriminations 
which  English  custom  and  statute  had  long  enforced  against  the  woman  in 
the  matter  of  divorce.  Mr.  Gladstone  spoke  almost  passionately  against 
this  injustice.  He  made  an  argument  in  which  he  showed  on  theological 
grounds  the    equal    rights    of  woman   in    marriage.      He   argued    that    law 


LAST    HALF    OF    THE    SIXTH    DECADE.  27 1 

and  society  growing  out  of  the  theological  foundation  on  this  subject  ought 
to  be  equally  just.  The  debate  was  animated,  and  nothing  but  the  compact- 
ness of  the  ministerial  majority  prevented  the  success  of  Gladstone's  attack 
on  the  proposed  bill. 

It  was  at  this  juncture  that  one  of  the  ever-recurring  difficulties  with 
China  came  up  for  discussion  in  the  House  of  Commons.  One  of  those 
hybrid  vessels  to  be  seen  on  the  coast  of  China — European  as  to  the  hull 
and  Chinese  as  to  the  rigging — called  a  lorcha,  and  named  the  Arrow,  had 
been  seized  by  the  Chinese  at  Canton,  although  the  ship  carried,  or  pre- 
tended to  carry,  the  British  colors.  The  circumstance  was  precisely  similar 
to  probably  a  hundred  others  in  which,  by  this  method  or  by  that,  a  difficulty 
has  been  raised  by  interested  and  perhaps  criminal  parties  on  coasts  and  in 
countries  thousands  of  miles  from  Great  Britain  ;  which  circumstance  has 
been  made  a  pretext  for  rallying  the  bully  in  England  and  for  continuing  her 
career  of  conquest  and  aggrandizement  at  the  expense  of  civilized,  half- 
civilized,  and  barbarous  nations.  Great  Britain  permits  her  subjects  to  go 
where  they  will,  even  to  the  heart  of  the  remotest  barbarism,  and  there,  fol- 
lowing their  inherent  instincts,  they  raise  a  difficulty  with  the  natives  and 
get  themselves  justly  killed  in  retribution.  Hereupon  Great  Britain  knows 
but  one  method,  namely,  to  make  war  upon  those  who  have  maltreated 
British  subjects  !  She  makes  war  accordingly,  slaughters  thousands,  takes 
possession  of  the  country,  reduces  the  native  races  to  subjection,  uses  them 
for  her  own  purposes  of  profit  until  what  time,  should  they  be  in  her  way, 
she  destroys  them  altogether.  This  she  calls  colonizing  and  civilizing  the 
world ! 

In  the  instance  under  consideration  the  half-breed  ship  was  a  vessel 
which  had  been  built  in  China  and  subsequently  captured  by  pirates.  After- 
ward it  was  retaken  by  the  Chinese.  It  was  owned  by  Chinese  traders  and 
manned  by  a  Chinese  crew.  The  license  to  carry  the  English  flag  had 
expired  a  good  while  before  the  vessel  was  finally  seized  by  the  Chinese 
authorities.  In  order  to  save  itself  the  vessel  put  up  the  British  flag. 
Therefore  the  Chinese  had  violated  international  law  and  defied  the  treaty 
of  1842  with  Great  Britain  ! 

The  whole  affair  was  one  of  which  almost  any  civilized  State  would 
have  been  heartily  ashamed  ;  but  not  so  Great  Britain.  The  ministerial 
policy  was  reprisal  and  punishment.  Sir  John  Bowring,  the  British  repre- 
sentative at  Canton,  had  made  reports  which,  fairly  interpreted,  showed  that 
he,  and  not  the  Chinese  authorities,  had  been  at  fault.  But  the  ministry 
supported  him  and  the  House  of  Lords  supported  the  ministry.  In  the 
Commons,  however,  Mr.  Cobden  introduced  the  following  resolution  :  "  That 
this  House  has  heard  with  concern  of  the  conflicts  which  have  occurred 
between  the  British  and  Chinese  authorities  in  the  Canton  River ;  and,  with- 


272  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM     E.    GLADSTONE. 

out  expressing  an  opinion  as  to  the  extent  to  which  the  government  of 
China  may  have  afforded  this  country  cause  of  complaint  respecting  the 
nonfulfiHment  of  the  treaty  of  1842,  this  House  considers  that  the  papers 
which  have  been  laid  upon  the  table  fail  to  establish  satisfactory  grounds  for 
the  violent  measures  resorted  to  at  Canton  in  the  late  affair  of  the  Arrow  ; 
and  that  a  select  committee  be  appointed  to  inquire  into  the  state  of  our 
commercial  relations  with  China." 

On  this  proposition  a  vigorous  debate  ensued.  The  purport  of  Cob- 
den's  argument  was  an  arraignment  of  Sir  John  Bowring,  whom  he  charged 
with  having  violated  international  law,  against  his  instructions,  thus  involv- 
ing the  country  in  a  difficulty  the  end  of  which  might  not  be  foreseen. 
Xight  after  night  the  discussion  broke  out  anew,  until  it  was  finally  con- 
cluded by  Lord  Palmerston  and  a  last  speech  by  Cobden  in  support  of  his 
resolution. 

Among  the  arguments  that  of  Mr.  Gladstone  was  conspicuous  for  its 
ability.  He  denied  that  Sir  John  Bowring  was  on  trial  before  the  House, 
nor  would  the  speaker  allow  the  case  of  Sir  John  to  conceal  the  real  issue. 
It  was  the  duty  of  the  House  to  treat  the  absent  representative  of  the  gov- 
ernment with  respect  and  justice,  however  much  he  might  have  erred  in  his 
relations  with  the  Chinese.  The  great  business  of  Parliament  was  to  have 
respect  to  the  honor  of  England  in  her  relations  with  other  governments. 
For  his  own  part  he  was  convinced  that  Sir  John  Bowring  had  committed  a 
wrong,  but  he  thought  that  that  wrong  had  been  done  in  excessive  zeal  for 
the  cause  which  he  represented.  Whether  it  were  or  were  not  so  done,  the 
actions  of  Sir  John  Bowring  were  known  to  her  majesty's  government.  His 
policy  had  not  been  reprehended  or  disapproved.  He  thought  that  the 
allegation  made  by  honorable  gentlemen  of  deep-seated  wrongs  done  by  the 
Chinese  and  treasured  up  in  memory  against  them  was  not  true.  Why  had 
not  reparation  in  case  of  the  ship  Arrozu  been  sought  by  means  of  reprisals  } 
It  could  not  be  claimed  that  all  the  residents  of  Hong-Kong  were  British 
subjects;  and  as  to  our  treaty  stipulations  with  China,  what  were  they  .-^  Had 
not  the  British  nation  itself  broken  the  treaty  by  permitting  the  trade  in 
opium  to  go  on  unchecked  ?  Was  not  that  trade  prosecuted  illicitly  under 
the  British  flag  by  a  fleet  of  lorchas  differing  not  from  buccaneers  .'' 

Such  use  of  the  British  ensign  was  a  shame  to  England.  The  people 
of  Canton  had  suffered  the  greatest  wrongs,  and  it  was  the  duty  of  Parlia- 
ment to  put  an  end  to  them.  Had  such  a  course  been  pursued  by  the  gov- 
ernment there  would  have  been  no  war  with  China.  "  Is  it,"  said  the  speaker, 
"  too  late  to  disavow  the  wrongs  that  have  been  committed  .-'  Do  we  fear 
the  moral  effect  of  such  disavowal  ?  It  behooves  the  House  to  consider 
what  will  be  the  moral  impressions  produced  by  refusing  to  disavow  injus- 
tice  and  wrong.     Every   member  of   the    House   of  Commons    is   proudly 


LAST    HALF    OF    THE    SIXTH    DECADE.  273 

conscious  that  he  belongs  to  an  assembly  which  in  its  collective  capacity  is 
the  paramount  power  of  the  State.  But  if  it  is  the  paramount  power  of  the 
State  it  can  never  separate  from  that  paramount  power  a  similar  and  para- 
mount responsibility.  The  vote  of  the  House  of  Lords  will  not  acquit  us; 
the  sentence  of  the  government  will  not  acquit  us.  It  is  with  us  to  deter- 
mine whether  this  wrong  shall  remain  unchecked  and  uncorrected  ;  and  at 
a  time  when  sentiments  are  so  much  divided  every  man,  I  trust,  will  give  his 
vote  with  the  recollection  and  the  consciousness  that  it  may  depend  upon 
his  single  vote  whether  the  miseries,  the  crimes,  the  atrocities  that  I  fear  are 
now  proceeding  in  China  are  to  be  discountenanced  or  not.  We  have  now 
come  to  the  crisis  of  the  case.  England  is  not  yet  committed.  With  you, 
then,  with  us,  with  everyone  of  us,  it  rests  to  show  that  this  House,  which  is 
the  first,  the  most  ancient,  and  the  noblest  temple  of  freedom  in  the  world, 
is  also  the  temple  of  that  everlasting  justice  without  which  freedom  itself 
would  only  be  a  name  or  only  a  curse  to  mankind.  And  I  cherish  the  trust 
and  belief  that  when  you,  sir,  rise  to  declare  in  your  place  to-night  the  num- 
bers of  the  division  from  the  chair  which  you  adorn,  the  words  which 
you  speak  will  go  forth  from  the  walls  of  the  House  of  Commons,  not  only 
as  a  message  of  mercy  and  peace,  but  also  a  message  of  British  justice  and 
British  wisdom  to  the  farthest  corners  of  the  world." 

Mr.  Gladstone's  address  was  so  powerful  and  the  impression  produced 
by  it  so  distinct  that  Lord  Palmerston  felt  the  necessity  of  a  strong  rally 
lest  the  majority  should  declare  against  the  government  on  the  Cobden 
resolution.  The  premier,  always  adroit  and  effective,  spoke  to  the  point 
that  many  factions  were  in  union  against  the  administration  without  other 
cause  than  the  common  cause  of  opposing  the  government.  The  House 
of  Commons  was  the  custodian  of  the  lives  and  property  of  all  British 
subjects.  More  than  this,  it  was  the  custodian  of  the  honor  and  fame  of 
Great  Britain  herself.  In  that  capacity  the  House  must  resist  both  the  fact 
and  the  tendency  of  the  pending  motion.  The  reputation  of  Great  Britain 
was  at  stake,  and  Lord  Palmerston  could  not  doubt  that  that  reputation 
was  sacred  in  the  estimation  of  Parliament. 

At  this  juncture  Mr.  Disraeli  saw  his  opportunity  for  a  home  thrust  at 
the  premier.  For  his  part  he  said  that  he  accepted  the  view  that  the 
pending  resolution  was  in  character  a  vote  of  censure  on  the  government. 
As  for  the  deprecatory  remarks  of  Lord  Palmerston  relative  to  the  combi- 
nation of  factions  against  the  administration,  those  remarks  came  with  ill 
grace  from  a  noble  lord  who  had  himself  been  the  archetype  of  just  such 
political  combinations  without  principle  as  that  which  he  now  complained 
of  If  the  premier  was  about  to  be  made  a  victim  of  the  system  of  com- 
bining many  parties  against  the  party  in  power,  then  he  was  about  to  be 
victimized  by  a  system  of  which  he  had  been  the  greatest  patron.  More- 
18 


2/4  I-IFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTOxNE. 

over,  if  Lord  Palmerston  did  not  approve  of  the  act  and  judcrment  of 
the  House  in  the  matter  now  pending-  he  had  axright  of  appeal  to  the 
country. 

It  is  evident  that  Mr.  Disraeh  scented  the  disposition  of  the  House  to 
vote  against  the  government  on  the  Cobden  resolution.  The  debate  was 
closed,  according  to  custom,  by  the  author  of  the  resolution.  The  result 
showed  that  his  attack,  powerfully  supported  by  Gladstone  and  Disraeli, 
had  prevailed.  The  resolution  was  adopted  by  a  majority  of  sixteen.  Lord 
Palmerston,  however,  regarded  this  vote  as  only  an  incidental  expression  of 
opposition,  and  not  as  a  general  condemnation  of  his  policy.  He  announced 
this  judgment  to  the  House,  and  instead  of  accepting  the  adverse  vote  as 
an  overthrow  and  resigning  his  office  he  declared  that,  since  the  recent 
divisions  did  not  show  want  of  confidence,  he  would  dissolve  Parliament 
and  appeal  to  the  country.  This  was  accordingly  done,  and  the  result 
showed  that  Lord  Palmerston  had  not  miscalculated  public  opinion.  The 
government,  instead  of  losing  a  part  of  its  forces,  gained  considerably  in 
the  elections  over  the  opposition.  What  was  worse  for  the  opposition  was 
the  fact  that  five  of  the  most  distinguished  Liberals,  namely,  Cobden,  Bright, 
Gibson,  Fox,  and  Layard,  were  all  defeated  by  the  ministerial  candidates. 
An  effort  was  made  to  prevent  the  reelection  of  Gladstone  for  Oxford  Uni- 
versity,but  the  effort  was  unsuccessful.  The  greater  number  of  the  remain- 
ing Peelites  escaped  the  condemnation  of  the  electors. 

At  this  juncture  the  financial  history  of  England  was  again  touched  by 
that  of  our  own  country.  The  year  1857  witnessed  a  bank  panic  in  the 
United  States,  and  the  contao^ion  of  it  was  felt  abroad  as  hiorh  as  the  Bank 
of  England.  The  directors  of  that  institution  appealed  to  the  ministry  to 
suspend  the  operation  of  the  Bank  Charter  of  1844  so  as  to  enable  the 
bank  to  increase  its  issues.  To  this  appeal  the  cabinet  assented  ;  but  the 
action  thus  taken  had  to  be  approved  by  Parliament  by  a  resolution  to 
indemnify  the  bank  against  the  results  of  suspending  the  charter.  On 
this  question  Mr.  Gladstone  spoke  again,  not  in  opposition  to  what  was 
done,  but  rather  upon  correlated  questions  which  arose  in  connection  there- 
with. He  showed  the  House  that  the  Charter  Act  related  only  to  the  issue 
of  notes,  but  he  believed  that  Parliament  ought  now  to  inquire  by  its 
committee  into  other  questions.  "  Instead  of  directing  the  committee,"  said 
he,  "  to  go  round  again  the  circle  of  inquir)'  into  the  currency  and  the  law 
of  issue  it  would  be  better  employed  in  investigating  the  commercial  causes 
of  the  late  panic,  and  how  far  they  were  connected  with  the  state  of  bank- 
ing. The  effect  of  referring  a  heap  of  subjects  to  an  overburdened  com- 
mittee would  be  to  postpone  legislation  and  obstruct  inquiries  into  the 
causes  of  the  recent  panic  and  the  present  embarrassment."  In  this  debate, 
however,  the  government  was  able  to  hold  its  own  ;  the   Gladstonian  views 


LAST    HALF    OF    THE    SIXTH    DECADE.  2/5 

did  not  take  the  form  of  specific  action,  and  an  amendment  offered  by  Dis- 
raeli was  rejected. 

Thus  closed  the  parliamentary  history  for  1857,  but  not  until  Great 
Britain  had  been  convulsed  by  the  rebellion  of  the  Sepoys  in  India.  It  was 
on  the  loth  of  May,  in  the  year  just  named,  that  the  dreadful  insurrection 
broke  out  at  Meerut.  The  insurgents  were  the  native  troops  of  Hindustan, 
organized,  equipped,  disciplined,  and  for  the  most  part  commanded  by 
British  officers.  They  were  called  in  their  own  language  Scpahees,  easily 
corrupted  into  Sepoys.  The  Hindus  had  made  comparatively  a  good  sol- 
diery. The  government  had  recently  adopted  the  policy  of  admitting  the 
high-class  Brahmans  into  the  service,  mostly  in  the  capacity  of  officers. 
This  brought  into  the  ranks  the  confusion  of  caste.  It  also  added  ability 
and  pride  to  the  native  ranks  and  complicated  the  problem  with  which 
Great  Britain  had  to  deal. 

Meanwhile,  under  the  administration  of  the  Earl  of  Dalhousie,  the 
British  dominion  in  India  had  been  extended  far  in  many  directions. 
Empires  had  been  annexed  with  multiplied  millions  and  tens  of  millions 
of  inhabitants.  The  method  was  the  usual  one  of  getting  embroiled  with 
the  native  princes  and  then  reducing  them  to  submission.  In  this  manner, 
within  ten  years  of  the  time  now  under  consideration,  five  great  provinces 
had  been  invaded,  either  by  intrigue  or  violence  of  arms,  and  annexed 
to  the  British  dominions.  These  were  the  Punjab,  Magpore,  Jattara, 
Jhansi,  and  Oudh.  The  princes  of  these  provinces,  of  ancient  and  illus- 
trious rank,  had  accepted  the  position  of  subordinates  to  which  their  con- 
querors assigned  them.  This  process  of  conquest  was  attended  with  glory 
and  profit.  When  the  Punjab  was  taken  the  Kohinoor  diamond,  greatest 
gem  of  the  world,  was  sent  to  England  by  the  Maharajah  of  Lahore  as 
his  token  of  submission.  The  Governor  General  of  India  rose  to  the  rank 
of  a  great  potentate,  and  if  his  administration  and  that  of  his  subordinates 
had  not  been  characterized  with  the  rapacity,  injustice,  and  insolence  for 
which  British  rule  all  over  the  world  is  proverbial,  then  all  might  have 
been  well  ;  but  the  administration  was  well  calculated  to  be  both  cause  and 
occasion  of  a  rebellion,  and  only  an  exciting  cause  was  necessary  to  pro- 
duce it. 

The  whole  world  knows  the  story  of  the  introduction  of  the  Enfield 
rifles  into  the  Anglo-Hindu  army.  The  world  knows  also  the  story  of  the 
greased  cartridges,  and  how  the  Sepoys  at  Meerut,  finding  that  they  must 
bite  off  the  cartridges,  greased  as  they  were  said  to  be  with  the  tallow  of 
sacred  cows  and  the  odious  fat  of  filthy  swine,  suddenly  mutinied,  rose  upon 
their  officers,  broke  into  wild  frenzy  and  perpetrated  cruelties  the  memory 
of  which  still  chills  the  blood.  Those  British  officers  who  did  not  save  them- 
selves as  they  might  when  the  rebels  came  upon  them  were  shot  down   or 


276  LIFE    AXU    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

Stabbed  to  death.  The  women  and  children  who  got  into  the  bastion  of  the 
Cashmere  gate  at  Meerut  were  horribly  butchered,  though  they  were  only 
defenseless  refugees.  Those  who  surrendered  or  put  themselves  in  the 
power  of  the  enraged  Sepoys  met  the  same  fate  as  those  who  stood  and 
foucrht. 

The  mutiny  spread  like  fire  running  in  stubble  before  the  wind.  From 
Meerut  it  extended  to  Delhi,  where  the  same  horrid  scenes  were  reen- 
acted.  From  Delhi  the  insurrection  reached  Lahore,  and  then  extended  to 
the  cantonments  at  Lucknow,  where  the  Seventy-first  National  Infantry  was 
stationed.  The  British  commander,  Sir  John  Lawrence,  and  Sir  Henry 
Lawrence,  Governor  of  Oudh,  and  others,  made  the  most  strenuous  efforts 
to  save  the  garrisons  and  defend  the  exposed  outposts.  On  the  2d  of  July 
Sir  Henry  Lawrence  received  a  fatal  wound.  Expiring  he  left  for  his 
epitaph,  "  Here  lies  Henry  Lawrence,  who  tried  to  do  his  duty."  The  task 
of  relieving  Lucknow  had  to  be  assumed  by  General  Henry  Havelock,  of 
great  memory. 

Meanwhile  the  insurrection  broke  out  at  Cawnpore,  with  a  ferocity 
unequaled  in  any  other  part  of  the  field.  Cawnpore  was  a  first-class  mili- 
tary station.  Here  was  situated  the  bridge  by  which  reinforcements  must 
pass  on  the  highway  to  Lucknow,  capital  of  the  province.  At  Cawnpore 
there  were  about  three  thousand  native  soldiers.  The  place  was  inhabited 
by  a  mixed  population  of  natives  and  Europeans,  the  latter  numbering 
about  a  thousand.  These  included  the  women  and  children,  the  officials  of 
the  government,  the  railway  officers,  merchants,  and  shopkeepers.  The  gar- 
rison was  commanded  by  the  venerable  Sir  Hugh  Wheeler,  already  in  his 
seventy-fifth  year. 

Within  the  intrenched  camp  were  the  hospital  and  barracks.  The  non- 
military  part  of  the  population  made  their  headquarters  in  a  church  and 
other  buildines  near  the  intrenchments.  The  commandant  sent  to  Sir 
Henry  Lawrence  for  aid  ;  but  none  could  be  given.  Then  it  was  that  Sir 
Hugh  Wheeler  appealed  to  the  chief  of  Bithoor,  son  of  a  Brahman  of  the 
Deccan,  for  assistance.  He  resided  about  twelve  miles  from  Cawnpore. 
He  was  known  as  the  Prince  Nana  Sahib,  and  was  one  of  the  most  treach- 
erous and  cruel  villains  that  ever  lived.  He  had  a  retinue  of  soldiers  and 
three  pieces  of  artillery.  On  receiving  Sir  Hugh's  appeal  he  came  speedily, 
and  pretended  to  espouse  the  cause  of  the  garrison ;  but  on  reaching 
Cawnpore  the  mutineers  summoned  him  to  be  //^^/r  leader  and  to  lead  them 
against  Delhi. 

The  subtle  chieftain  turned  against  the  English  and  ordered  Sir  Hugh 
Wheeler  to  surrender.  This  refused,  the  mutineers  assaulted  the  intrench- 
ments and  were  repulsed.  At  this  juncture  the  news  came  from  Lucknow 
that   not   a  man   could  be   spared    from   the   defense  of   that   place.     The 


LAST    HALF- OF    THE    SLXTH    DECADE. 


277 


SIR  COLIN   CAMPBELL. 


mutineers  gathered  by  thousands  around  the  intrenchments.      Reinforce- 
ments came  from  Oudh.     The  garrison  was  weakened  day  by  day.     The 
supplies  began  to  fail.    The  insurgents  could  see  that  the  fire  of  the  garrison 
was  weakening;     but    the    defense    continued 
desperately  against  the  odds  of  thousands  and 
the  decree  of  fate.     At  last  there  was  a  nego- 
tiation,   and     Nana    Sahib    agreed    that     the 
crarrison     on     surrenderinof     miofht     retire     to 
Allahabad.     Nothing   else    remained     for    the 
unfortunates  but  to  accept  this  proposal,  which 
was  accordingly  done. 

The  story  of  what  followed  has  been  given 
to  the  fame  of  immemorial  tragedy.  It  was 
determined  to  destroy  the  last  one  of  the  cap- 
tives. The  poor  wretches  were  put  or  begun 
to  be  put  into  boats,  but  before  they  could  get 
away  they  were  attacked  at  the  shore  and  shot 
and  butchered  until  all  were  destroyed.  The 
remainder  of  the  Eurooeans  were  confined  in  a 
building,    which  was    assailed,    and    here    the 

crowning  diabolism  of  butchery  was  accomplished.  Then  it  was  that  the 
dry  well  behind  the  trees  growing  near  by  was  stuffed  to  the  curb  with  the 
mutilated  bodies  of  men,  women,  and  children,  some  of  whom  were  still 
living  when  they  were  thrown  in.  It  was  reported  that  in  some  instances 
the  Sepoys,  by  preference,  threw  in  the  children  alive ! 

All  this  was  at  length  discovered  by  Havelock's  column  coming  to  the 
rescue.  Nor  need  we  recite  again  the  story  of  the  horrors  of  Lucknow,  or 
of  how  the  mutiny  was  finally  extinguished,  or  of  the  signal  vengeance  which 
the  enraged  British  commanders  took  upon  those  who  fell  into  their  power. 
The  Sepoy  rebellion  as  a  whole  will  long  remain  conspicuous  as  one  of  the 
most  bloody  and  furious  episodes  in  the  history  of  war  and  human  slaughter. 

The  general  result  of  the  outbreak  was  to  seal  the  fate  of  the  British 
East  India  Company.  That  company  had  existed  for  more  than  two  and 
a  half  centuries.  Its  original  charter  was  granted  by  Elizabeth  in  1600.  It 
was  now  clearly  perceived  that  no  such  corporation  was  fit  for  the  govern- 
ment of  India.  The  company  existed  for  the  prosecution  of  commerce.  Its 
political  functions  had  been  acquired  gradually,  according  to  the  enlarged 
demands  which  had  fallen  on  the  corporation.  The  smoke  of  the  mutiny 
had  not  cleared  away  until  one  India  bill  after  another  was  introduced  for 
the  better  government  of  the  races  and  nations  that  had  been  brought  under 
the  sway  of  the  English  scepter  in  the  East. 

The  first  measure  of  this  kind  was  brought  before  the  Commons  in 


78 


LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 


February  of  1858,  and  had  for  its  bottom  principle  to  end  the  existing  form 
of  government  in  India.  In  the  next  place,  a  measure  was  introduced  by 
the  chancellor  of  the  exchequer  to  abolish  the  political  powers  of  the  East 
India  Company  and  to  transfer  the  same  to  the  crown.  After  some  discus- 
sion this  measure  was  withdrawn,  and  the  third  India  bill  was  brought  for- 
ward, which  was  discussed  at  considerable  length,  and  was  passed  by  the 
House  on  the  8th  of  July,  1858.     By  this  act  the  entire  political  machinery 


f 

i 

^.-'x    v^Q 

GENERAL    HAVELOCK   GREETED    BY    THE   CHRISTIANS   WHOM    HE   SAVED. 

and  administrative  powers  of  the  company  were  transferred  to  the  crown  of 
Great  Britain.  It  was  enacted  that  India  should  be  henceforth  governed 
by,  and  in  the  name  of,  the  sovereign  of  England  through  one  of  the  princi- 
pal secretaries  of  state,  assisted  by  a  council  of  fifteen  members.  The  gov- 
ernor general  was  to  be  entitled  Viceroy  of  India.  The  British  troops,  act- 
ing hitherto  under  the  company,  and  numbering  about  twenty-four  thousand 
officers  and  men,  were  absorbed  in  the  royal  army  of  India,  and  the  existing 
Indian  navy  was  abolished  as  a  separate  service.  Thus  was  constituted  that 
empire  of  which,  at  a  subsequent  date,  under  the  auspices  of  Benjamin  Dis- 
raeli, now  in  office  as  chancellor  of  the  exchequer,  but  then  to  be  Premier  of 
England,  Victoria  was  to  be  declared  empress. 


LAST    HALF    OF    THE    SIXTH    DECADE. 


279 


The  transfer  of  India,  however,  by  the  acts  referred  to  from  the  com- 
pany which  had  so  long  controlled  the  destinies  of  that  country  to  the 
crown  of  England  was  not  ejected  without  many  acrimonious  discussions 
and  much  opposition  in  Parliament.  We  cannot  be  sure  but  that  the  posi- 
tion taken  by  Mr.  Gladstone  on  this  all-important  question  was  taken  rather 
because  he  was  in  opposition  than  on  the  merits  of  the  case.  At  any  rate' 
he  spoke  on  several  occasions  in  the  session  beginning  in  February  of  1858 
against  the  legislation  of  the  government  with  reference  to  Indian  affairs. 
He  seemed  to  deprecate  the  agitation  of  the  change.  At  first  he  opposed 
the  abolition  of  the  political  prerogatives  of  the  East  India  Company.  The 
India  bill  number  two  he  also  opposed,  alleging  the  great  difficulty  in 
attempting  to  govern  one  people  by  another  people  separated,  not  only  by 
distance,  but  by  blood  and  institutions. 

Mr.  Gladstone  alleged  that  the  directors  of  the  East  India  Company 
had  been  practically  a  body  protective  of  the  people  of  India,  and  that  he 
was  unable  to  see  in  either  of  the  plans  thus  far  proposed  an  evidence  of  a 
better  method  than  that  already  existing.  The  people  of  India  should  be 
protected,  not  only  from  those  dangers  to  which  they  were  exposed  in  their 
own  environment,  but  against  the  errors  and  indiscretion  of  the  people  and 
Parliament  of  England.  He  believed  that  the  liberties  of  the  people  of 
England  as  well  as  the  people  of  India  were  endangered  by  the  overreach- 
ing of  parliamentary  and  executive  prerogatives;  and  in  evidence  of  this  he 
cited  the  fact  that  war  had  been  made  or  undertaken  in  foreign  countries, 
and  debt  incurred,  without  the  knowledge  or  consent  of  the  House  of 
Commons. 

Later  in  the  session  Mr.  Gladstone  sought  to  pi-event  the  renewal  of 
the  agitation  for  the  transfer  of  the  government  of  India  to  the  crown  of  Eng- 
land. When  the  ministerial  measure  for  such  transfer  was  finally  matured 
he  thought  that  the  time  had  not  arrived  ;  that  there  had  not  been  oppor- 
tunity for  consideration;  that  the  question  of  governing  the  millions  of 
Hindustan  was  too  great  a  question  to  be  undertaken  and  completed  in  the 
manner  proposed.  He  finally  moved  an  amendment  to  the  bill  before  Par- 
liament, providing  that  the  British  forces  maintained  out  of  the  revenues  of 
India  should  not  be  employed  except  for  repelling  actual  invasion  or  beyond 
the  frontier  of  India  ;  but  the  amendment  was  negatived  and  the  govern- 
mental measure  became  a  law. 

In  this  opposition  to  the  progressive  measures  so  strongly  suggested  by 
the  Sepoy  rebellion  Mr.  Gladstone  may  have  been  impelled  by  his  conserva- 
tive disposition  to  move  slowly  in  a  direction  which  he  would  have  been 
willing  to  take  under  other  conditions.  But  the  British  manner  of  antag- 
onizing whatever  proceeds  from  the  ministry,  even  if  the  antagonism  goes 
no  further  than  criticising  mildly  the  given  policy,  was  also  a  moving  motive 


28o  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

with  the  statesman.  It  may  be  allowed  that  his  opposition  to  the  legisla- 
tive enactments  by  which  India  became  an  empire  under  the  scepter  of 
England  was  hardly  in  the  interest  of  good  policy,  and  certainly  not  in  the 
interest  of  British  civilization  in  the  East. 

We  here  revert  to  the  circumstances  which  brought  about  the  over- 
throw of  the  Palmerston  government.  Early  in  the  session  of  1858  the 
premier  brought  before  Parliament  his  measure  called  "  The  Conspiracy  to 
Murder  Bill."  Recently  a  certain  Felice  Orsini,  out  of  Forli,  Italy,  had 
attempted  with  certain  confederates  to  assassinate  Napoleon  III  with  a 
bomb.  This  occurred  on  the  14th  of  January,  1858.  The  thing  attempted 
was  dastardly  enough.  Orsini  had  lived  for  some  years  in  England  and  had 
been  employed  by  Mazzini,  the  Italian  patriot.  From  that  vantage  he  had 
published  a  brochure  on  The  Austrian  Dungeons  in  Italy.  He  was  a  revolu- 
tionist and  anarchist.  The  attempt  on  Napoleon's  life  awakened  not  a  little 
sympathy.  The  Imperialists  in  France  were  rampant,  saying  among  other 
things  that  England  was  a  den  of  refuge  for  just  such  creatures  as  Orsini. 

The  ministerial  party  in  England  had  long  been  accused  of  strong 
sympathies  with  the  imperial  regime  across  the  Channel.  In  this  condition 
of  affairs  Lord  Palmerston  introduced  his  bill  proposing  to  make  it  a  felony 
to  conspire  against  the  lives  of  rulers.  At  first  the  proposition  was  received 
with  applause,  but  presently  a  wave  of  reaction  went  over  the  country,  origi- 
nating in  the  peculiarly  English  sentiment  that  the  proposed  bill  was  really 
an  instance  of  Lord  Palmerston's  toadying  to  the  Emperor  Napoleon.  This 
distrust  was  fatal.  The  reaction  came  on  like  a  wave  of  the  sea.  Milner 
Gibson  offered  to  amend  the  ministerial  measure  as  follows:  "That  this 
House  hears  with  much  concern  that  it  is  alleged  the  recent  attempts  upon 
the  life  of  the  emperor  of  the  French  have  been  devised  in  England,  and 
expresses  its  detestation  of  such  guilty  enterprises  ;  that  this  House  is  ready 
at  all  times  to  assist  in  remedying  any  defects  in  the  criminal  law  which, 
after  due  investigation,  are  proved  to  exist ;  and  that  this  House  cannot  but 
regret  that  her  majesty's  government,  previously  to  inviting  the  House  to 
amend  the  law  of  conspiracy  at  the  present  time,  have  not  felt  it  their  duty 
to  reply  to  the  important  dispatch  received  from  the  French  government, 
dated  Paris,  January  20,  1858,  which  has  been  laid  before  Parliament." 

Hereupon  a  critical  debate  began.  The  mover  of  the  resolution  spoke 
thereto  with  great  spirit.  He  attacked  Lord  Palmerston  on  the  score  of  not 
having  answered  the  Paris  dispatch.  That  dispatch  from  the  Count  Alex- 
andre de  Walewski,  President  of  the  Corps  Legislatif,  was  an  affront  to  Eng- 
land. Besides,  the  Due  de  Morny,  recently  ambassador  to  Russia,  had 
declared  that  England  was  a  den  of  savaees,  a  nest  of  assassins.  The 
speaker  then  read  a  paragraph  from  the  London  Times,  to  the  effect  that 
when  Lord  Palmerston  made  up  his  mind  to  court  the  good  will  of  a  foreign 


LAST    HALF    OF    THE    SLXTH    DECADE.  28 1 

power  no  sacrifice  of  principle  or  of  interest  was  too  great  for  him.  The 
excerpt  went  on  as  follows  :  "  From  first  to  last  his  [Lord  Palmerston's] 
character  has  been  the  want  of  a  firm  and  lofty  adherence  to  the  known 
interests  of  England,  and  it  is  precisely  from  a  want  of  such  guiding  laws 
of  conduct  that  our  foreign  policy  has  degenerated  into  a  tissue  of  caprices, 
machinations,  petty  contentions,  and  everlasting  disputes."  These  allega- 
tions against  the  head  of  the  ministry  were  precisely  of  the  kind  to  destroy 
it.  A  charge  of  being  un-English  directed  against  the  cabinet,  if  not 
immediately  and  overwhelmingly  refuted,  is  always  fatal  to  an  existing  gov- 
ernment in  Great  Britain. 

Gibson's  speech  was  followed  with  another  of  like  purport,  but  still 
more  able,  by  Mr.  Gladstone.  He  began  by  expressing  his  approval  of  the 
recent  alliance  with  France  and  the  hope  that  that  alliance  might  continue. 
He  then  alluded  to  the  bickerings  that  had  occurred  between  France  and 
England  since  the  treaty  of  Paris.  He  next  interrogated  the  government 
to  know  whether  the  Count  de  Walewski's  dispatch  had  been  answered, 
and  if  not,  why  not }  To  this  Lord  Palmerston,  brought  into  a  strait  place, 
replied  that  he  had  given  a  verbal  answer  to  the  message  referred  to. 
Gladstone  replied  with  much  spirit  that  a  verbal  answer  was  not  satisfactory 
to  the  House  of  Commons.  The  House  demanded  an  explicit  and  une- 
quivocal answer  to  the  French  dispatch.  That  message  had  been  inimical 
to  the  reputation  of  England.  It  behooved  the  government  to  answer 
these  charges  in  no  equivocal  terms.  An  explanation  should  have  been 
sent  to  the  Count  Walewski  of  the  nature  of  the  English  Constitution  and 
the  customs  of  the  realm  with  respect  to  domiciliated  foreigners. 

This  duty,  the  speaker  said,  had  been  neglected,  and  following  this 
neglect  the  House  was  asked  to  pass  the  Conspiracy  to  Murder  Bill.  The 
request  to  do  so  did  not  consist  with  English  dignity.  Let  none  be  led 
away,  urged  the  speaker,  with  vague  statements  about  reforming  the 
criminal  law.  Rather  should  there  be  an  insistence  on  the  necessity  of 
vindicating  the  law.  "As  far  as  justice  requires,"  said  the  speaker,  "let  us 
have  the  existing  law  vindicated,  and  then  let  us  proceed  to  amend  it  if  It 
be  found  necessary.  But  do  not  let  us  allow  it  to  lie  under  a  cloud  of 
accusations  of  which  we  are  convinced  that  it  is  totally  innocent.  These 
times  are  grave  for  liberty.  We  live  In  the  nineteenth  century  ;  we  talk  of 
progress;  we  believe  that  we  are  advancing;  but  can  any  man  of  observation 
who  has  w^atched  the  events  of  the  last  few  years  in  Europe  have  failed  to 
perceive  that  there  Is  a  movement  indeed,  but  a  downward  and  backward 
movement  ?  There  are  a  few  spots  in  which  Institutions  that  claim  our 
sympathy  still  exist  and  flourish.  They  are  secondary  places — nay,  they  are 
almost  the  holes  and  corners  of  Europe  so  far  as  mere  material  greatness  is 
concerned,  althouorh  their  moral   oreatness  will,   I   trust.   Insure  them  lono- 


282  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM     E.    GLADSTONE. 

prosperity  and  happiness.  But  in  these  times  more  than  ever  does  responsi- 
bihty  center  upon  the  institutions  of  England;  and  if  it  does  center  upon 
England,  upon  her  principles,  upon  her  laws,  and  upon  her  governors,  then 
I  say  that  a  measure  passed  by  this  House  of  Commons — the  chief  hope  of 
freedom — which  attempts  to  establish  a  moral  complicity  between  us  and 
those  who  seek  safety  in  repressive  measures,  will  be  a  blow  and  a  discour- 
agement to  that  sacred  cause  in  every  country  in  the  world." 

Other  speeches  followed  in  like  vein,  but  none  so  able  or  effective. 
The  premier  in  his  reply  to  these  severe  strictures  of  the  opposition  was 
less  happy,  though  hardly  less  sarcastic,  than  usual.  No  doubt  he 
apprehended  the  result.  He  assailed  Milner  Gibson  for  having  become  a 
patriot  pro  temp07'e.  Formerly  that  gentleman  had  been  the  most  sub- 
servient of  any  to  foreign  powers.  The  speaker  charged  that  Mr.  Gibson 
was  a  member  of  a  faction  the  attitude  of  which  had  been  that  it  made  no 
difference  if  England  should  be  conquered  by  a  foreign  ^X.?ilQ., provided  the 
English  mills  sJiould  still  keep  riuming !  This  sail)',  though  it  was  bitter 
enough,  failed  of  effect  because  of  the  injustice  of  the  charge,  and  when 
Lord  Palmerston  closed  the  impending  result  was  already  manifested. 
The  Conspiracy  to  Murder  Bill  was  defeated  by  a  majority  of  nineteen  votes. 

The  ministry  of  Lord  Palmerston  went  down  with  a  crash.  The  usual 
resignations  followed,  and  the  usual  reconstruction.  Affairs  seemed  to  hang 
for  a  while  in  medio.  It  appeared  doubtful  whether  a  new  government 
could  be  constructed  by  either  party  out  of  materials  that  were  sufficient!)' 
sympathetic  to  cohere.  Her  majest)'  sent,  however,  for  the  Earl  of  Derby, 
and  to  him  assigned  the  task  of  reconstruction.  That  statesman  succeeded 
fairly  well  with  the  work  in  hand.  To  Mr.  Gladstone  he  offered  the  place 
of  secretary  for  the  colonies,  but  the  offer  was  declined.  Mr.  Disraeli  was 
a  second  time  made  chancellor  of  the  exchequer.  The  composition  of  the 
cabinet  was  as  harmonious  as  might  be  under  the  circumstances;  but  there 
was  little  promise  of  permanence.  Upon  the  Derby  government  was 
devolved  the  duty  of  settling  the  all-important  questions  which  arose  out  of 
the  great  insurrection  in  India — an  account  of  which  and  of  the  terms  of 
pacification  we  have  already  given. 

Once  more  at  this  epoch,  namely,  in  the  autumn  of  1858,  Mr.  Gladstone 
and  his  future  rival  were  almost  at  one.  When  Mr.  Disraeli  presented  his 
budget  for  the  year  just  named  there  was  direct  recognition  of  the 
Gladstonian  plan  of  finance,  outlined  five  years  previously,  and  Mr. 
Gladstone  expressed  his  thanks  in  the  House  to  the  chancellor  of  the 
exchequer  for  recommending  certain  measures  which  he  regarded  as  highly 
important.  Among  these  was  the  proposition  to  equalize  the  duties  on 
spirits.  If  he  were  disposed  to  criticise  any  part  of  the  budget  it  would  be 
the  failure  of  the  chancellor  of  the  exchequer  to  insist  that  the  expenditures 


LAST    HALF    OF    THE    SLXTH    DECADE. 


28 


EDWARD    GEOFFREY    STANLEY    (EARL 
OF    DERBY). 


of  the  nation  should  be  kept  within  the  provisions  of"  the  income.  The 
whole  speech  was  so  kindly  in  its  manner  as  almost  to  produce  an 
atonement  between  the  two  great  men  who  were  so  long  to  divide  the 
honors  of  their  coimtry. 

Though  Mr.  Gladstone  would  not  accept  the  proffered  place  in  the 
Derby  cabinet  he  did  accept  the  appoint- 
ment of  lord  high  commissioner  extraordin- 
ary to  the  Ionian  Islands.  This  group, 
consisting  of  Corfu,  Santa  Maura,  Cepha- 
lonia,  Zante,  Paxo,  Ithaca,  and  Cerigo,  with 
a  few  smaller  islands,  had  a  history  extend- 
ing back  at  least  as  far  as  the  Crusades. 
They  had  been  annexed  to  France  in  1797, 
conquered  by  the  Russians  and  the  Turks 
two  years  afterward,  made  a  republic  in 
1800,  annexed  to  France  in  1807,  and  put 
under  the  protection  of  Great  Britain  by  the 
Congress  of  Vienna  in  18 15.  The  question 
of  their  annexation  to  Greece — which  was 
destined  to  be  effected  in  1864 — was  alreadv 
agitated.  There  were  political  difficulties 
among  the  lonians,  and  Mr.  Gladstone  was  sent  as  the  representative  of 
Great  Britain  to  inquire  into  the  actual  condition  of  affairs. 

In  the  meantime  the  secretary  for  the  colonies  had  in  a  dispatch 
which  got  to  the  public  hinted  at  the  willingness  of  Great  Britain  to 
relinquish  the  protectorate.  Another  communication  by  Sir  John  Young, 
former  high  commissioner  to  Ionia,  recommended  the  abandonment  of  the 
islands  to  their  own  way,  with  the  exception  of  Corfu,  which  the  lord  high 
commissioner  thought  ought  to  be  retained  as  a  British  fortress.  The 
lonians  were  greatly  excited  and  angered  at  these  reports,  and  their 
Legislative  Assembly,  in  January  of  1859,  prepared  a  petition  to  the 
British  government  for  annexation  of  the  Ionian  Islands  to  Greece.  Mr. 
Gladstone,  to  whom  the  petition  was  presented,  was  obliged  to  inform  his 
government  that  the  Ionian  people  were  unanimous  in  favor  of  their  union 
with  Greece.  Mr.  Gladstone  remained  in  his  office  of  lord  high  commis- 
sioner until  the  19th  of  February,  1859,  when  he  embarked  on  his  return  to 
England,  and  was  succeeded  by  General  Sir  Henry  Storks.  The  question 
of  annexation  continued  to  be  agitated  until  Great  Britain  finally  yielded, 
withdrew  her  garrisons,  and  assented  to  the  union  of  Ionia  with  Greece. 

In  a  future  chapter  of  this  work  we  shall  consider  somewhat  in  extenso 
the  literary  work  and  genius  of  William  E.  Gladstone.  For  the  present  we 
make  note  of  the  fact  that   in   the   year   1858  he   published  his  remarkable 


284  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

book  entitled  Studies  on  Homer  and  the  Homeric  Age.  The  work  bears 
the  imprint  of  Oxford,  and  is  regarded  by  most  critics  as  the  best  and  most 
scholarly  production  of  its  author.  ,  The  appearance  of  the  book  greatly 
enhanced  the  reputation  oi  Mr.  Gladstone  among  his  countrymen.  Critics 
eave  him  a  laro^e  measure  of  commendation.  It  was  seen  that  a  British 
statesman  much  occupied  with  affairs,  a  parliamentarian,  a  responsible 
leader,  and  an  aspirant  for  the  highest  honors  of  his  country,  could  never- 
theless find  time  and  inspiration  for  the  composition  of  a  scholarly,  even  a 
profound,  treatise  on  the  Homeric  problems.  To  this  question  we  shall 
revert  in  future  pages. 

History  had  provided  a  short  life  for  the  administration  of  Lord 
Derby.  The  public  mind  of  Great  Britain  had  by  the  year  1859  suffi- 
ciently cooled  from  the  heats  of  the  Crimean  War  and  the  East  Indian 
insurrection  to  turn  to  the  consideration  of  certain  reforms  relative  to  Par- 
liament. Public  opinion  now  ran  strongly  in  this  direction.  On  the  assem- 
bling of  Parliameilt  in  February  of  1859  ^  Reform  Bill  which  had  been 
prepared  was  announced  to  the  House  of  Commons.  The  tide  of  public 
sentiment  could  no  longer  be  stemmed.  John  Bright,  before  great  assem- 
blies of  the  people  in  Birmingham,  Manchester,  and  Glasgow,  had  denounced 
the  existing  systeni  of  representation  in  terms  so  scathing  that  ministerial 
notice  must  be  taken  of  the  abuses  complained  of,  and  a  Reform  Bill  had 
to  be  brought  in  as  a  panacea. 

It  fell  to  the  part  of  Mr.  Disraeli  to  introduce  and  defend  the  proposed 
measure.  By  it  it  was  proposed  to  establish  a  new  rule  of  suffrage  on  a  basis 
of  personal  property.  Every  person  having  ten  pounds  yearly  from  the 
public  funds  or  a  pension  of  twenty  pounds,  as  well  as  ministers,  graduates 
of  the  university,  lawyers,  and  doctors  should  have  the  right  of  suffrage. 
The  principle  of  suffrage  should  be  extended  impartially  to  the  counties 
and  the  towns.  It  was  estimated  that  about  two  hundred  thousand  suffrages 
would  by  this  means  be  gained  by  the  country  districts.  This  was  well 
enough,  but  the  gain  made  by  the  country  was  thought  to  be  at  the  expense 
of  the  towns.  Members  of  both  parties  attacked  the  measure  on  the  ground 
that  freeholders  in  towns  were  robbed  by  the  proposed  scheme  of  the  votes 
which  they  were  then  entitled  to  cast  in  the  counties. 

The  dissension  over  the  bill  extended  into  the  cabinet.  Two  of  the 
ministers  refused  to  support  the  measure.  Lord  John  Russell  introduced 
an  amendment,  "  That  this  House  is  of  opinion  that  it  is  neither  just  nor 
politic  to  interfere  in  the  manner  proposed  by  this  bill  with  the  freehold 
franchise  as  hitherto  exercised  in  counties  in  England  and  Wales  ;  and  that 
no  readjustment  of  the  franchise  will  satisfy  this  House  or  the  country 
which  does  not  provide  for  a  greater  extension  of  the  suffrage  in  cities  and 
boroughs  than  is  contemplated  in  the  present  measure." 


LAST    HALF    OF    THE    SIXTH    DECADE.  285 

This  expression  from  Lord  John  Russell,  now  in  his  seventy-second 
year,  created  a  profound  impression.  Lord  John  advocated  his  measure 
briefly,  and  ended  with  this  remarkable  declaration,  "  With  regard  to  this 
great  question  of  reform  I  may  say  that  I  defended  it  when  I  was  youno;, 
and  I  will  not  desert  it  now  that  I  am  old."  The  Liberals  and  Progressives 
caught  at  the  question  eagerly.  Herbert  and  Bright  both  made  effective 
speeches.  Gladstone  took  up  the  theme  in  a  cautious  way.  Within  certain 
limits  he  would  assent  to  the  governmental  plan.  He  made  note  of  the 
fact  that  the  political  parties  were  not  divided  on  the  general  question  of  a 
reform.  He  thought  if  the  amendment  should  be  adopted  little  good  would 
arise,  but  rather  harm,  in  unsettling  a  government  that  was  not  strongly 
fortified.  As  matters  stood  the  administration  had  strong  claims  upon  the 
support  of  the  House. 

The  speaker  proceeded  almost  humorously  to  present  a  sketch  of  the 
vicissitudes  of  reform  during  the  decade.  "  In  185  i,"  said  he,  "my  noble 
friend,  then  the  first  minister  of  the  crown,  approached  the  question  of 
reform  and  commenced  with  a  promise  of  what  was  to  be  done  twelve 
months  afterward,  hi  1852  he  brought  in  a  bill,  and  it  disappeared  together 
with  the  ministry.  In  1853  we  had  the  ministry  of  Lord  Aberdeen,  which 
commenced  with  a  promise  of  reform  in  twelve  months'  time.  Well,  1854 
arrived  ;  with  it  arrived  the  bill,  but  with  it  also  arrived  the  war,  and  in  the 
war  was  a  reason,  and  I  believe  a  good  reason,  for  abandoning  the  bill. 
Then  came  the  government  of  my  noble  friend  the  member  for  Tiverton, 
which  was  not  less  unfortunate  in  the  circumstances  that  prevented  the 
redemption  of  those  pledges  which  had  been  given  to  the  people  from  the 
mouth  of  the  sovereign  on  the  throne.  In  1855  my  noble  friend  escaped 
all  responsibility  for  a  Reform  Bill  on  account  of  the  war;  in  1856  he 
escaped  all  responsibility  for  reform  on  account  of  the  peace  ;  in  1857  he 
escaped  that  inconvenient  responsibility  by  the  dissolution  of  Parliament; 
and  in  1858  he  escaped  again  by  the  dissolution  of  his  government." 

Mr.  Gladstone  proceeded  in  a  spirited  discussion  of  the  question,  crit- 
icising here  and  approving  there  the  principles  involved.  As  a  true  towns- 
man he  objected  to  the  loss  by  freeholders  in  boroughs  of  their  franchise 
in  the  counties.  He  also  held  back  from  the  principle  of  making  the  fran- 
chise uniform,  but  he  favored  the  reduction  of  the  suffrage  now  allowed  to 
boroughs.  He  insisted  that  this  must  be  done  if  any  genuine  reform  was 
to  be  instituted.  He  agreed  that  the  seats  in  Parliament,  as  the  same  were 
now  conceded  to  the  constituencies,  would  have  to  be  redistributed.  He 
pleaded  for  the  small  boroughs  of  England  and  for  the  maintenance  of 
their  liberties.  He  ventured  to  think  that  from  this  quarter  the  great  men 
of  England  were  largely  derived.  He  favored  a  committee  of  the  whole 
for  the  consideration  of  the  question.     He  wished  to  see  the  issue  settled. 


286  LIFE    A>fD    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.   GLADSTONE. 

In  casting  his  vote  against  tlie  amendment  proposed  by  Lord  Russell  he 
would  not  be  understood  as  voting  for  the  government  or  for  any  party. 

It  was  evident  at  this  juncture  that  the  House  was  under  the  dominion 
of  chaos.  When  it  came  to  the  second  reading  of  the  ministerial  bill  that 
measure  was  negatived  by  a  majority  of  thirty-nine  votes.  The  decision  of 
the  House  was  sufficiently  distinct,  but  Lord  Derby  was  of  opinion  that 
the  House  did  not  represent  the  country  on  the  pending  issue.  He  there- 
fore dissolved  Parliament  on  the  19th  of  April,  1859,  ^^^  made  the  usual 
appeal  to  the  constituencies.  The  result  showed  that  the  judgment  of  Lord 
Derby  had  been  well  grounded.  The  new  elections  gave  the  government  a 
considerable  majority.  Oxford  University  continued  its  support  of  Mr. 
Gladstone.  Parliament  was  reconvened  on  the  last  day  of  May,  and  for  the 
moment  all  seemed  well  for  the  existing  order.  When,  however,  the 
address  to  the  queen  was  presented  the  debate  broke  out  with  more  than 
the  usual  sharpness.  An  amendment,  changing  the  tone  and  contradicting 
the  statements  of  the  address,  was  made  by  the  Marquis  of  Hartington. 
To  this  several  members  spoke,  and  when  it  came  to  a  vote  of  the  House 
the  government  was  again  in  the  minority. 

Under  English  usage  there  was  nothing  left  for  the  Earl  of  Derby 
but  to  resign  his  office.  Whom  should  the  queen  send  for  in  his  stead 
but  Lord  Palmerston  ?  That  eccentric  statesman,  again  in  full  feather, 
came  to  the  fore  and  successfully  organized  a  new  government,  in  which 
the  place  of  chancellor  of  the  exchequer  was  assigned  to  Mr.  Gladstone. 
Thus  at  the  close  of  the  sixth  decade  the  statesman  whose  life  and  work 
are  the  subject  of  this  treatise,  being  then  fifty  years  of  age,  found  himself 
for  the  second  time  in  a  position  of  responsibility  inferior  by  but  a  little  to 
that  of  Prime  Minister  of  England. 


MINISTER    OF    FINANCE    UNDER    PALMERSTON. 


287 


CHAPTER    XVII. 
Minister  of  Finance  under  Palmerston. 

|Y  his  acceptance  of  office  under  Lord  Palmerston,  Mr.  Glad- 
stone raised  a  storm  of  opposition  among  his  constituents.  It 
could  be  said  against  him  that  in  the  late  ministerial  crisis  he 
had  voted  to  sustain  the  Earl  of  Derby  ;  now  he  had  accepted 
office  under  the  successor  of  Lord  Derby.  This  must  signify 
that  he  had  turned  his  political  coat — of  which  there  had  been  vague  sus- 
picion for  some  years — and  had  gone  over  to  Liberalism,  a  thing  intolerable 
to  Oxford. 

The  cry  against  the  new  chancellor  of  the  exchequer  rose  high  in  that 
sacred. seat  of  the  past.  Mr.  Gladstone  must  submit  his  case  to  his  con- 
stituency before  assuming  office  under  Palmerston.  The  Conservative  party 
at  Oxford  rose  up  against  him  and  proposed  as  its  candidate  the  Marquis 
of  Chandos.  The  contest  became  spirited  and  was  marked  with  some 
animosity.  It  seemed  in  vain  for  Mr.  Gladstone's  friends  to  explain  that  his 
late  vote  in  favor  of  Lord  Derby  was  ovAy  'gw^n pro  forma.  In  vain  did  they 
urge  that  he  had  not  been  guilty  of  changing  his  political  affiliations.  The 
clamor  was  so  great  that  it  seemed  Mr.  Gladstone  would  be  here  and  now 
defeated;  but  when  it  came  to  the  nomination  on  the  27th  of  June,  1S59, 
the  vote  showed  a  safe  but  not  overwhelming  majority  in  his  favor.  Under 
this  indorsement  of  his  constituents  he  was  again  able  to  take  up  his  duties 
as  chancellor  of  the  exchequer.  This  he  did  by  presenting  his  budget  in 
the  House  of  Commons  on  the  i8th  of  July.  He  did  so  in  his  usual  happy 
manner,  commanding  the  closest  attention  of  the  members. 

The  aggregate  results  of  Mr.  Gladstone's  recommendation  pointed  to  a 
revenue  of  a  little  over  sixty-four  million  pounds  and  an  expenditure  of  a 
little  more  than  sixty-nine  million  pounds  for  the  current  year.  The  balance 
showed  a  deficit  of  nearly  five  million  pounds.  The  chancellor  in  present- 
ing the  budget  intimated  that  the  same  had  been  prepared  in  the  short 
space  of  time  at  his  disposal,  and  that  the  measures  recommended  were  not 
to  be  considered  as  a  finality.  The  time  was  near  at  hand,  even  at  the  door, 
when  the  income  tax  must  cease.  This  M^ould  ijiake  a  large  reduction  in  the 
revenues.  Another  reduction  would  follow  the  abatement  of  the  war  duties 
on  tea  and  sugar.  Against  this  he  was  able  to  point  to  the  coming  in  of  the 
duties  on  annuities  ;  but  for  the  present  there  would  be  a  deficiency.  As  he 
had  ever  been,  he  was  still  opposed  to  increasing  the  national  debt.  He 
would  not  assent  to  do  so  unless  he  were  forced  by  an  implacable  necessity. 
He  should  oppose  the  method  of  making  loans.  Rather  would  he  prefer 
the  system  of  taxation.     England  was  now   prosperous.     The  people  were 


288  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILI.IAM    K.    GLADSTONE. 

well  satisfied  with  the  demands  made  upon  them  in  the  way  ot  taxation.  If 
it  should  be  necessary  to  increase  the  tax  schedule  it  must  be  done  in  the 
form  either  of  a  direct  or  an  indirect  imposition. 

The  chancellor  did  not  think  it  wise  to  increase  the  duty  on  malt  or 
that  on  distilled  spirits.  He  should  also  oppose  an  increase  in  the  customs 
or  excises.  What  remained.?  Only  the  income  tax;  and  that  was  about  to 
expire.  The  deficit  which  the  treasury  must  meet  was  nearly  five  millions. 
By  a  readjustment  of  the  tax  on  malt  the  treasury  could  gain  at  once  the 
sum  of  seven  hundred  and  eighty  thousand  pounds.  The  remaining  four 
million  pounds  he  proposed  to  meet  by  increasing  the  income  tax  from  five- 
pence  to  ninepence  the  pound.  By  this  means  he  could  obtain  the  requisite 
four  million  pounds.  Beginning  with  the  incomes  of  a  hundred  and  fift)' 
pounds  and  upward  he  would  make  the  addition  to  the  rate  fourpence  the 
pound  ;  but  for  incomes  under  a  hundred  and  fifty  pounds  he  would  increase 
the  rate  by  only  one  and  a  half  pence  the  pound.  He  would  postpone  the 
falling  of  the  tax  for  a  half  year  after  the  adoption  of  a  new  schedule.  By 
this  means,  instead  of  a  deficit,  the  treasury  might  obtain  a  surplus  of  a 
quarter  of  a  million.  Concluding  his  presentation  the  speaker  said  :  "  Instead 
of  ascribing  to  the  great  English  people  a  childish  impatience  to  meet  the 
necessary  demands  with  which  they  were  never  chargeable,  I,  on  the  con- 
trary, shall  rely  on  their  unyielding,  inexhaustible  energy  and  generous 
patriotism,  and  shall  be  confident  that  they  will  never  shrink  from  or  refuse 
any  burden  required  in  order  to  sustain  the  honor  or  provide  for  the  security 
of  the  country." 

Here  then  the  tables  were  completely  turned.  It  was  now  Mr.  Dis- 
raeli's opportunity  to  give  back  the  compliment  of  the  limited  support  which 
he  in  office  had  received  from  Mr.  Gladstone.  But  Benjamin  Disraeli  was 
not  that  sort  of  a  statesman.  He,  however,  had  good  grounds  for  the  opposi- 
tion which  he  now  made  to  the  Gladstonian  budget.  He  took  up  the  very 
argument  which  Mr.  Gladstone  had  himself  so  many  times  eipployed, 
namely,  that  the  expenditures  were  enormous  and  ought  to  be  reduced.  He 
protested  against  the  scale  by  which  the  public  funds  were  consumed.  The 
revenues  derived  from  the  income  tax,  said  he,  were  wasted.  The  expendi- 
tures in  support  of  enormous  military  and  naval  establishments  ought  to  be 
reduced  by  reducing  the  establishments  themselves.  Great  Britain  could  not 
be  taxed  seventy  million  pounds  annually.  It  behooved  Great  Britain  and 
France  to  reduce  their  armaments,  and  thus  to  obviate  the  charge  of  hypoc- 
risy when  pretending  to  desire  universal  peace.  If  such  a  policy  should  be 
adopted  then  Great  Britain,  the  government  of  Great  Britain,  could  make 
good  its  oft-repeated  pledge  with  respect  to  the  income  tax,  namely,  that 
that  odious  tax  should  cease  with  the  year  i860. 

Mr.  Gladstone  agreed  with  a  part  of  what  his  rival  had  said.      He  con- 


MINISTER    OF    FINANCE    UNDER    PALMERSTON.  289 

currcd  in  as  much  as  related  to  the  reduction  in  the  armaments  of  Europe. 
He  declared  that  England  would  be  in  duty  bound  to  favor  a  movement  of 
this  kind.  He  objected,  however,  to  Disraeli's  denunciation  of  international 
congresses.  In  the  recent  cabinet  of  which  Mr.  Disraeli  had  been  a  mem- 
ber international  conferences  had  been  promoted.  Such  bodies  might  be 
regarded  with  favor  as  agencies  for  the  establishment  of  peace.  Mr.  Glad- 
stone insisted  that  the  income  tax  might  be  effectively  and  justly  extended 
so  that  onehalf  of  the  additional  levy  might  rest  on  the  year  1860-6  i.  The 
debate  ended  by  the  adoption  without  amendment  of  the  budget  as  it  came 
from  the  hands  of  the  chancellor  of  the  exchequer. 

It  was  in  the  summer  of  this  year  that  Free  Italy  began  to  be  by  war. 
A  conflict  between  that  country,  supported  by  France,  and  the  Austrian 
empire  had  been  impending  since  the  beginning  of  the  year.  The  Austrian 
domination  in  Italy  could  not  be  longer  endured.  Victor  Emmanuel 
appeared  as  the  champion  of  the  Italian  cause  in  the  held  and  Count 
Cavour  as  its  champion  in  the  cabinet.  On  the  3d  of  May,  1859,  Napoleon 
III  espoused  the  Sardinian  cause,  declaring  his  purpose  to  make  Italy  free 
from  the  Alps  to  the  Adriatic.  A  week  later  he  left  Paris  for  Genoa.  The 
French  and  Italians  combined  against  the  Austrians,  and  on  the  20th  of 
May  a  severe  battle  was  fought  at  Montebello. 

Strategic  movements  on  the  part  of  the  allies  were  now  made,  and  the 
second  battle  successful  to  them  was  fought  at  Palestro.  On  the  31st  of 
May  the  French  moved  on  Novara.  Next  was  fought  the  great  battle  of 
Magenta,  lasting  through  the  greater  part  of  the  4th  of  June,  and  ending  in 
a  complete  victory  for  the  allies.  The  Emperor  of  the  French  and  the 
King  of  Sardinia  entered  Milan  four  days  afterward  and  were  received  with 
wild  demonstrations  by  the  people.  The  next  engagement  occurred  at 
Malegnano,  where  the  Austrians  were  defeated  and  driven  back  across  the 
plains  of  Lombardy  to  the  line  of  the  Mincio.  The  allies  pursued  them, 
and  the  advance  divisions  came  together  near  the  villao-e  of  Solferino,  where 
on  the  24th  of  June,  1859,  ^^^^  decisive  battle  of  the  war  was  fought.  On 
the  one  side  the  allies  were  commanded  by  the  Emperor  of  the  French  and 
the  King  of  Sardinia.  The  Austrians  were  under  command  of  the  Emperor 
Francis  Joseph,  and  were  defeated  with  a  loss  of  about  twenty  thousand 
men.  Such  was  the  severity  of  the  fighting  that  the  allied  losses  were 
nearlv  as  o-reat. 

^  o 

Just  afterward,  while  expectation  was  on  tiptoe  throughout  Europe  as 
to  the  next  stage  of  the  war,  the  two  emperors,  Austrian  and  French,  met  at 
Villafranca  and  concluded  a  treaty  of  peace  the  overtures  of  which  were 
made  by  Napoleon.  That  astute  ruler  perceived  that  should  he  press  his 
vantage  further  the  whole  Germanic  confederation  would  probably  rise 
against  him.  He  therefore  adroitly  brought  the  war  to  an  unexpected 
19 


290 


LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 


MINISTER    OF    FINANCE    UNDER    FALiMERSTON.  29 1 

close.  An  armistice  was  signed  on  the  8th  of  July,  and  the  treaty  was  pro- 
claimed just  afterward.  The  principal  features  of  the  settlement  were  as 
follows : 

1.  The  two  sovereigns  will  favor  the  creation  of  an  Italian  confederation. 

2.  That  confederation  shall  be  under  the  honorary  presidency  of  the 
holy  father. 

3.  The  Emperor  of  Austria  cedes  to  the  Emperor  of  the  French  his 
rights  over  Lombardy,  with  the  exception  of  the  fortresses  of  Mantua  and 
Peschiera,  so  that  the  frontier  of  the  Austrian  possessions  shall  start  from 
the  extreme  range  of  the  fortress  of  Peschiera,  and  shall  extend  in  a  direct 
line  along  the  Mincio  as  far  as  Grazio  ;  thence  to  Scorzarolo  and  Luzana  to 
the  Po,  whence  the  actual  frontiers  shall  continue  to  form  the  limits  of  Aus- 
tria. The  Emperor  of  the  French  will  hand  over  {remettrd)  the  ceded  terri- 
tory to  the  King  of  Sardinia. 

4.  Venetia  shall  form  part  of  the  Italian  confederation,  though  remain- 
ing under  the  crown  of  the  Emperor  of  Austria. 

5.  The  Grand  Duke  of  Tuscany  and  the  Duke  of  Modena  return  to 
their  States,  granting  a  general  amnesty. 

6.  A  full  and  complete  amnesty  is  granted  on  both  sides  to  persons 
compromised  in  the  late  events  in  the  territories  of  the  belligerent  parties. 

These  important  events  occurred  on  the  Continent  without  the  partici- 
pation of  England.  Great  Britain  feels  herself  disparaged  under  such  cir- 
cumstances. If  history  seems  at  any  time  to  go  forward  without  her  helping 
hand  she  conceives  that  history  is  neglectful  and  mankind  in  error.  At  this 
juncture  the  project  of  a  peace  conference  to  settle  the  status  of  Italy  was 
agitated.  The  measure  eot  utterance  in  the  House  of  Commons.  Lord 
Elcho  in  that  body  introduced  a  resolution  :  "That  in  the  opinion  of  the 
House  it  would  be  consistent  neither  with  the  honor  nor  the  dignity  of  this 
country  to  take  part  in  any  conference  for  the  purpose  of  settling  the  details 
of  a  peace  the  preliminaries  of  which  have  been  arranged  between  the 
Emperor  of  the  French  and  the  Emperor  of  Austria."  An  effort  was  made  to 
avoid  the  discussion  of  this  issue,  but  Mr.  Gladstone  boldly  met  it  with  a 
declaration  that  the  House  was  willing  to  reject  the  resolution  by  a  direct 
vote,  or  if  the  opinion  prevailed  that  the  time  was  inopportune  for  consider- 
ing the  resolution  then  the  House  was  equally  ready  to  concur  in  a  motion 
which  had  been  made  for  the  previous  question. 

In  Encrlish  usage  the  previous  question  is  debatable.  The  speaker 
accordingly  went  on  to  review  Lord  Elcho's  proposition.  "  It  might  be 
well,"  he  said,  "  that  the  details  of  the  peace,  so  far  as  they  relate  singly  to 
questions  of  the  war,  shall  be  determined  by  the  participants  therein  ;  but  if 
questions  of  international  import  arise  out  of  the  conflict  then  there  is  no 
reason  why  Great  Britain  and  other  neutral  States  may  not  with  honor  and 


2g2  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

dignity  confer  about  the  conditions  of  settlement."  The  present  govern- 
ment in  this  respect  was  not,  the  speaker  thought,  departing  from  the  poHcy 
of  its  predecessor.  The  government  had  preserved  its  neutraHty.  It 
appeared  that  the  mover  of  the  resohition  before  the  House  had  a  fear  lest 
Great  Britain  participating. in  a  conference  should  show  herself  the  enemy 
of  Austria.  Great  Britain  was  not  the  enemy  of  Austria.  Such  an  assump- 
tion was  gratuitous.  Great  Britain  wished  well  to  Austria  and  the  Austrian 
people.  True,  the  government  might  suppose  Austria  to  be  in  the  wrong 
in  the  Italian  complication.  He  did  not  hesitate  to  say  that  Austria  had 
repressed  Italian  liberty  with  an  iron  hand.  The  political  abuses  of  Italy 
were  under  the  patronage  and  promotion  of  Austria.  In  so  far  as  Great 
Britain  might  participate  in  a  peace  conference  it  would  be  to  consider 
whatever  was  best  for  Europe  as  a  whole,  and  not  only  what  might  be  best 
for  Italy  or  Austria.  He  would  suggest  that  the  last-named  power  would 
be  the  stronger  for  a  withdrawal  from  Italy  and  Italian  affairs.  The  true 
policy  for  Great  Britain  might  be  the  policy  of  nonintervention;  but  the 
speaker  appealed  to  the  records  to  show  that  the  policy  must  have  its  limi- 
tations. It  had  been  said  that  England  either  confided  in  the  Emperor  of 
the  French,  and  might  therefore  trust  him  to  determine  the  conditions  of 
peace — in  which  event  there  would  be  no  call  for  participation  in  the  peace 
conference — or  else  England  did  not  confide  in  the  Emperor  of  the  French, 
in  which  event  she  should  not  participate.  Mr.  Gladstone  would  agree 
with  Lord  Elcho  on  the  last  proposition  ;  but  why  not  participate  in  a  con- 
ference with  Napoleon  III,  if  that  ruler  possessed  the  confidence  of  England.'^ 

The  debate  continued  with  sharp  fire  all  along  the  line.  In  the  discus- 
sion speeches  were  made  by  several  of  the  strongest  parliamentarians, 
including  Mr.  Disraeli  and  Lord  Palmerston.  None  of  them,  however,  were 
thought  to  equal  in  force  the  chancellor  of  the  exchequer,  whose  explication 
of  the  subject  was  so  clear  that  Lord  Elcho  withdrew  his  resolution,  and 
the  matter  ended. 

It  was  at  this  juncture  that  the  first  symptoms  of  the  great  religious 
question  which  was  to  play  sc  large  a  part  in  the  history  of  England  for  the 
next  two  decades  were  seen  in  parliamentary  debates.  England  was  Prot- 
estant and  Episcopalian;  Ireland,  Roman  Catholic.  During  the  current  ses- 
sion of  Parliament  an  amendment  bill  was  offered  to  the  Roman  Catholic 
Relief  Act,  declaring  the  eligibility  of  a  Roman  Catholic  to  the  office  of  Lord 
Chancellor  of  Ireland.  Such  a  proposition  was  a  red  flag  to  a  considerable 
faction  in  the  House  of  Commons.  This  party  was  composed  of  extreme 
Church  of  England  men  and  of  such  Irish  members  as  were  affiliated  or  in 
sympathy  with  the  society  of  Orangemen.  Two  members  in  particular,  Mr. 
Newdegate  and  Mr.  Whiteside,  made  inflammatory  speeches  against  the 
proposed  measure.     They  denounced    the    proposition  as  inimical    to  the 


MINISTER    OF    FINANCE    UNDER    PALMERSTON.  293 

British  Constitution.  They  attempted  to  show  that  the  passage  of  such  a 
measure  would  undo  the  guarantees  of  1829. 

It  appears  that  the  argument  of  these  gentlemen  against  the  enlarge- 
ment ot  religious  toleration  in  Ireland  was  exceedingly  distasteful  to  Mr. 
Gladstone,  who  awaited  his  opportunity  to  speak.  It  was  noticed  by  all 
that  he  had  been  much  improved  in  person  and  spirits  by  his  recent  sojourn 
and  rest  in  the  Ionian  Islands.  His  vigorous  health  was  remarked  upon, 
and  when  he  began  his  speech  an  unusual  fire  appeared  in  his  oratory.  He 
spoke  for  only  a  short  time,  but  his  effort  was  so  powerful  as  to  arouse  the 
House  to  an  unusual  pitch  of  excitement.  It  was  said  by  eyewitnesses  that 
the  effect  of  the  address  was  as  marked  as  any  which  had  been  delivered  in 
Parliament  since  the  days  of  Sir  Robert  Peel.  So  conserv-ative,  however, 
was  the  temper  of  the  House  and  of  the  British  nation  that  some  time 
elapsed  before  the  pending  proposition  was  accepted. 

It  was  at  the  close  of  the  sixth  decade,  or  rather  in  the  first  year  of  the 
seventh,  that  Great  Britain  was  confirmed  in  her  policy  of  free  trade  by  a 
commercial  alliance  with  France,  on  the  basis  of  that  principle  and  practice. 
It  appears  that  the  Emperor  Napoleon  III  had,  during  his  long  sojourn  in 
England,  studied  the  question  of  free  trade  and  protection  with  the  greatest 
interest.  His  residence  in  London  coincided  with. that  period  when  Great 
Britain  was  passing  from  her  immemorial  policy  of  protection  to  the  then 
untried  method  of  free  trade.  The  Bonaparte  was  convinced  that  the 
change  was  of  an  expedient  and  salutatory  character.  On  his  accession  to 
power  he  was  virtually  a  free  trader ;  but  not  so  the  French  nation.  The 
first  years  of  his  reign  were  occupied  with  the  adjustment  of  the  imperial 
relations,  with  the  Crimean  War,  and  with  the  Italian  complication.  Not 
until  the  latter  difficulty  was  settled  was  there  opportunity  for  him,  either 
singly  or  in  conjunction  with  Great  Britain,  to  promote  a  change  in  the 
commercial  theory  and  practice  of  France. 

It  appears  that  the  alliance  about  to  be  effected  between  England  and 
France  originated  with  the  powerful  speaking  of  John  Bright,  It  happened 
that  the  report  of  the  arguments  and  appeals  made  by  Bright  fell  into  the 
hands  of  M.  Chevalier,  the  French  ambassador  at  London,  who,  convinced 
of  the  validity  of  the  reasoning,  signified  to  Richard  Cobden  his  belief  that 
a  commercial  policy  on  the  "principle  of  free  trade  might  then  be  negotiated 
between  France  and  England.  The  result  was  that  Cobden  himself  was,  by 
the  advice  and  under  the  auspices  of  the  chancellor  of  the  exchequer,  sent 
to  Paris,  where,  after  interviews  with  the  emperor,  he  entered  into  formal 
negotiations  with  Count  Walewski,  Minister  for  Foreign  Affairs. 

Full  accounts  have  been  preserved  by  Cobden  of  his  repeated  inter- 
views with  Napoleon  and  the  leading  statesmen  of  the  imperial  government. 
Gladstone  himself  was,  as  chancellor  of  the  exchequer,  behind  the  movement 


294 


LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 


on  the  English  side,  or  at  least  a  strong  supporter  of  it.  He  was  the  most 
powerful  official  factor  in  the  negotiations,  though  the  skill  of  management 
was  Cobden's.  A  paragraph  from  the  diary  of  Cobden  for  the  21st  of 
December,  1859,  shows  clearly  enough  the  bottom  element  in  the  move- 
ment: "  Had  an  interview  with  the  emperor  at  the  Tuileries.  I  explained  to 
him   that  Mr.  Gladstone,  the  chancellor  of  the  exchequer,  was  anxious  to 


RICHARD    COBDEN. 


prepare  his  budget  for  the  ensuing  session  of  Parliament,  and  that  it  would 
be  a  convenience  to  him  to  be  informed  as  soon  as  possible  whether  the 
French  government  was  decided  to  agree  to  a  commercial  treaty,  as  in  that 
case  he  would  make  arrangements  accordingly  ;  that  he  did  not  wish  to  be 
in  possession  of  the  details,  but  merely  to  know  whether  the  principle  of  a 
treaty  was  determined  upon.  The  emperor  said  he  could  have  no  hesitation 
in  satisfying  me  on  that  point ;  that  he  had  quite  made  up  his  mind  to  enter 


MINISTER    OF    FINANCE    UNDER    PALMERSTON.  295 

into  the  treaty,  and  that  the  only  question  was  as  to  the  details.  He  spoke 
of  the  difficulties  he  had  to  overcome,  owing  to  the  powerful  interests  that 
were  united  in  defense  of  the  present  system.  '  The  protected  industries 
combine  [said  Napoleon],  but  the  general  public  do  not.'  " 

The  success  of  Mr.  Cobden  in  negotiating  the  commercial  treaty  was 
complete.  The  extract  just  given  shows  how  profound  was  Mr.  Gladstone's 
interest  in  the  thing  accomplished.  The  preparation  of  his  budget  for  i860 
depended  upon  whether  or  not  France  could  be  induced  to  abandon  her 
system  of  import  duties.  Cobden  at  Paris  was  Gladstone's  agent.  He  was 
there  at  first  in  a  wholly  unofficial  capacity.  All  he  could  say  to  the  Emperor 
of  the  French  was  that  the  English  nation  would  be  favorably  disposed 
toward  a  commercial  treaty.  At  length  the  matter  proceeded  so  far  that 
Cobden  received  official  instructions  from  Lord  John  Russell,  and  in  the 
subsequent  proceedings  was  a  representative  of  the  government. 

The  treaty  in  question  was  framed  with  great  concessions  to  the  prin- 
ciple of  free  trade.  The  duties  which  had  been  previously  laid  by  the  two 
governments  on  importations  of  each  other's  goods  were  either  wholly 
abolished  or  greatly  reduced.  On  the  French  side  the  tariff  on  English  coal 
and  coke,  wrought  iron,  tools,  machinery,  yarns,  fla.x;,  and  hemp  was  so 
reduced  as  to  make  the  importation  of  these  articles  into  France  virtually 
free.  On  the  other  hand,  and  on  the  English  side,  the  duties  on  light  French 
wines  were  abolished — a  measure  which  led  at  once  to  a  gfreat  increase  in 
the  consumption  of  such  drinks  in  Great  Britain.  It  was  noticed, moreover, 
that  the  consumption  of  the  heavy  alcoholic  beverages,  hitherto  used  in  such 
excessive  quantities  in  England,  was  reduced  in  a  corresponding  ratio. 

The  relation  of  Gladstone  to  this  important  stage  in  the  economic 
progress  of  Europe  illustrates  the  histor)'  of  his  whole  life.  He  had  not 
been  an  original  agitator  for  free  trade.  That  work  had  been  accomplished 
by  Cobden,  Bright,  and  their  coworkers  of  the  Manchester  school.  Glad- 
stone always  rose  on  the  crest  of  movements  which  he  followed  rather  than 
led,  and  controlled  because  those  who  had  originated  the  impulse  could  not 
command  the  opinion  of  Great  Britain  sufficiently  to  be  the  leaders  of 
the  very  progress  which  they  had  initiated.  The  commercial  treaty  with 
France  was  of  vast  importance,  not  only  to  the  immediate  measures  which 
the  chancellor  of  the  exchequer  wished  to  devise  in  the  department  of 
finance,  but  bore  powerfully  upon  the  whole  policy  of  Great  Britain,  fixing 
and  confirming  it  in  that  form  which  it  has  ever  since  maintained. 

It  was  as  early  as  February,  in  i860,  that  Mr.  Gladstone  came  forward 
with  that  budget  about  which  a  good  deal  of  his  financial  fame  hangs  like  a 
halo.  He  had  suffered  a  temporary  illness  at  the  time,  and  was  not  able  to 
present  his  statement  until  the  tenth  of  the  month.  Old  parliamentarians 
long  retained  a  memory  of  the  extraordinary  scene  then  witnessed.     Rarely 


296 


LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 


has  the  hall  of  the  House  of  Commons  been  so  packed  as  on  that  occasion. 
Mr.  Gladstone  came  to  his  task  and  kept  the  closest  attention  of  the  House 
and  of  the  throng  of  spectators  for  fully  four  hours.  His  immense  will 
stood  him  well  in  hand,  and  his  hearers  were  not  able  to  detect  in  his  voice 
or  manner  the  evidences  of  his  recent  indisposition. 

All  the  biographers  of  the  statesman  agree  with  common  tradition  in 
makinpf  the  occasion  of  the  budget  of  i860  memorable  in  the  annals  of  the 
financial   history  of   Great    Britain.     We  may  not   doubt    that    the    happy 


MEMBERS     LOBBY,   HOUSE  OF   COMMONS. 


faculty  had  been  reserved  for  Gladstone  to  combine  with  the  mere  statistics 
and  bare  recommendations  of  the  budget  a  method  of  exposition,  illustra- 
tion, argument,  and  even  appeal  which  converted  the  document  into  an 
address  of  the  highest  order  and  the  occasion  of  its  delivery  into  an 
oratorical  file. 

The  House  of  Commons,  having  resolved  itself  into  Committee  of  the 
Whole,  was  ready  to  hear  the  finance  minister  in  his  address  on  the  budget. 
Beginning,  he  said:  "Sir,  public  expectation  has  long  marked  out  the  year 
i860  as  an  important  epoch  in  British  finance.     It  has  long  been  well  known 


1 


MINISTER    OF    FINANCE    UNDER    PALMERSTON. 


297 


that  in  this  year,  for  the  first  time,  we  were  to  receive  from  a  process  not  of 
our  own  creation  a  very  great  relief  in  respect  of  our  annual  payment  of  in- 
terest upon  the  national  debt — a  relief  amounting  to  no  less  a  sum  than  two 
million  one  hundred  and  forty-six  thousand  pounds — a  relief  such  as  we 
never  have  known  in  time  past,  and  such  as,  I  am  afraid,  we  shall  never 
know  in  time  to  come.  Besides  that  relief  other  and  more  recent 
arrangements  have  added  to  the  importance  of  this  juncture.  A  revenue  of 
nearly  twelve  million  pounds  a  year,  levied  by  duties  on  tea  and  sugar, 
which  still  retain  a  portion  of  the  additions  made  to  them  on  account  of  the 
Russian  war,  is  about  to  lapse  absolutely  on  the  31st  of  March,  unless  it 
shall  be  renewed  by  Parliament.  The  income  tax  act,  from  which  during 
the  financial  year  we  shall  have  derived  a  suni  of  between  nine  million 
and  ten  million  pounds,  is  likewise  to  lapse  at  the  very  same  time,  although 
an  amount  not  inconsiderable  will  still  remain  to  be  collected  in  virtue  of  the 
law  about  to  expire.  And  lastly,  an  event  of  not  less  interest  than  any  of 
these,  w^hich  has  caused  public  feeling  to  thrill  from  one  end  of  the  countr\- 
to  the  other — I  mean  the  treaty  of  commerce,  which  my  noble  friend  the 
foreign  minister  has  just  laid  on  the  table — has  rendered  it  a  matter  of 
propriety,  nay,  almost  of  absolute  necessity,  for  the  government  to  request 
the  House  to  deviate,  under  the  peculiar  circumstances  of  the  case,  from  its 
usual,  its  salutary,  its  constitutional  practice  of  voting  the  principal  charges 
of  the  year  before  they  proceed  to  consider  the  means  of  defraying  them, 
and  has  induced  the  government  to  think  they  would  best  fulfill  their  duty 
by  inviting  attention  on  the  earliest  possible  day  to  those  financial  arrange- 
ments for  the  coming  year  w^hich  are  materially  affected  by  the  treaty  with 
France,  and  which,  though  they  reach  considerably  beyond  the  limits  of 
that  treaty,  yet,  notwithstanding,  can  only  be  examined  by  the  House  in  a 
satisfactory  manner  when  examined  as  a  whole." 

These  strong  and  comprehensive  utterances  were  but  the  prelude  of 
the  address  that  followed.  Mr.  Gladstone  in  the  next  place  declared  his 
satisfaction  with  the  announcement  which  he  was  able  to  make  that  for  the 
past  year  the  revenues  of  the  government  had  surpassed  the  estimates  by 
more  than  half  a  million  pounds.  The  expenditures  had  been  less  than  the 
estimated  income  by  about  half  a  million.  He  was  therefore  pleased  to 
announce  on  the  face  of  the  balances  a  surplus  of  a  million  six  hundred 
and  twenty-five  thousand  pounds.  There  had,  however,  been  an  ex- 
traordinary expenditure  of  nine  hundred  thousand  pounds  incident  to 
the  Chinese  war,  and  also  an  unforeseen  expense  of  the  navy  of  two 
hundred  and  seventy  thousand  pounds.  These  two  items  were  a  virtual 
offset  to  the  surplus.  But  there  was  another  item  of  six  hundred  and 
forty  thousand  pounds,  in  the  way  of  a  reduction  on  the  score  of  the 
abolished  duties  on   French  wines.      The    speaker  was    able,    however,  to 


298  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

report  the  payment  of  an   old   debt  due  from  Spain,  amounting  to   a  half 
million  pounds. 

Mr.  Gladstone  next  referred  to  the  charge  against  the  government  on 
the  score  of  the  interest  of  the  public  debt  and  to  the  annuities  which  were 
about  to  expire.  This  brought  him  to  the  particulars  of  revenue  to  be 
expected  from  various  sources  for  the  following  year.  He  made  compara- 
tive showings  reaching  back  not  only  to  the  period  when  he  had  first  held 
the  place  of  chancellor  of  the  exchequer,  but  as  far  as  1842,  demonstrating 
how  greatly  the  country  had  grown  in  its  resources  and  capabilities.  All 
kinds  of  industry  had  been  promoted.  Agriculture  had  gained  most  of  all. 
Wealth  had  increased  more  rapidly  than  the  aggregate  of  expenditures. 
Notwithstanding  the  great  revenues  that  might  be  expected  he  must 
announce  a  deficit  of  nine  million  four  hundred  thousand  pounds  to  be 
provided  for.  He  thought  that  a  maximum  of  a  shilling  a  pound  in  the  way 
of  income  tax  would  meet  the  demand  of  the  treasury  and  at  the  same  time  " 
relieve  consumers  of  the  tax  on  suear  and  tea.  The  income  tax  which  had 
been  so  burdensome  had  been  met  without  complaint.  Now,  that  the 
commercial  treaty  with  France  had  been  effected,  the  country  would  rest 
assured  of  an  early  relief  from  the  tax  on  incomes.  There  might  have  been 
incidental,  but  there  certainly  was  no  general  discontent  on  the  score  of  the 
tax  referred  to,  though  here  and  there  the  voice  of  the  caviler  had  been 
heard. 

In  the  next  division  of  his  oration  Mr.  Gladstone  discussed  the  general 
question  of  the  relation  of  reduced  taxation  to  the  aggregate  of  revenues, 
showing  by  examples  that  in  all  cases  the  removal  of  the  burdens  from 
trade  and  commerce  resulted,  in  no  oreat  time,  in  swelling  the  revenues  of 
a  State.  This  brought  the  speaker  to  the  immediate  consideration  of  the 
recent  commercial  treaty  with  France.  He  told  the  House  that  he  should 
confidently  recomniend  the  adoption  of  the  treaty  as  fulfilling  and  satisfying 
the  conditions  of  the  most  beneficial  kind  of  chanee  in  commercial  lemsla- 
tion.  He  enumerated  the  articles  exported  from  Great  Britain  to  France, 
on  which  the  duties  had  been  either  reduced  or  abolished,  namely,  coal, 
iron,  yarn,  flax,  hemp,  etc.  Part  of  the  duties  were  to  cease  in  the  current 
year;  others  were  to  expire  in  1861.  Within  four  years  there  should  be 
no  duty  remaining  at  a  higher  figure  than  twenty-five  per  cent  ad  valorem. 

As  reciprocal  with  these  great  advantages  Great  Britain  would  agree 
to  the  immediate  abolition  of  all  duties  on  imported  manufactures  from 
France  ;  to  a  reduction  of  the  duty  on  brandy  to  eight  shillings  twopence  to 
the  gallon  ;  on  French  wines,  to  three  shillings  the  gallon,  with  a  sliding 
scale  according  to  quality  down  to  one  shilling  the  gallon,  etc.  This  sug- 
gested the  question  whether  the  great  advantages  gained  in  these  respects 
for    British    commerce  had    been   purchased  with    a  sacrifice  of  dignity  or 


i 


MINISTER    OF    FINANCE    UNDER    PALMERSTON.  299 

national  honor.  This  intimation  the  speaker  rejected  as  unfounded.  There 
had  been  no  subserviency  to  France.  The  time  had  come  when  the  two 
powers  found  it  mutually  to  their  interest  to  dwell  in  peace  and  amity. 
This  had  not  always  been  so.  There  had  been  a  time  when  the  alliance  of 
the  two  nations  had  been  coupled  with  the  shame  of  England.  There  was 
one  former  instance  in  which  close  relations  of  amity  had  been  established 
between  the  two  governments,  but  that  instance  was  a  dark  spot  in  English 
annals.  "The  spot  is  dark,"  said  the  speaker,  "because  the  union  was  a 
union  formed  in  the  spirit  of  domineering  ambition  on  the  one  side  and  of 
base  and  most  corrupt  servility  on  the  other.  But  that,  sir,  was  not  a 
union  of  nations;  it  was  a  union  of  the  orovernments.  This  is  not  to  be  a 
union  of  the  governments  apart  from  the  countries  ;  it  is,  as  we  hope,  to  be 
a  union  of  the  nations  themselves  ;  and  I  confidently  say  again,  as  I  have 
already  ventured  to  say  in  this  House,  that  there  never  can  be  any  union 
between  the  nations  of  England  and  France,  except  a  union  beneficial  to 
the  world,  because  directly  that  either  the  one  or  the  other  of  the  two  begins 
to  harbor  schemes  of  selfish  aggrandizement  that  moment  the  jealousy  of 
its  neighbor  will  be  aroused  and  will  beget  a  powerful  reaction  ;  and  the 
very  fact  of  their  being  in  harmony  will  of  itself  at  all  times  be  the  most 
conclusive  proof  that  neither  of  them  can  be  engaged  in  meditating  any- 
thing which  is  dangerous  to  Europe." 

Mr.  Gladstone  next  urged  that  the  fears  that  might  arise  in  the  minds 
of  some  lest  the  commercial  treaty  might  be  in  principle  and  effect  an  imped- 
iment to  free  trade  were  entirely  unfounded.  The  treaty  could  not  imply 
anything  of  the  kind  unless  it  should  contain  provision  for  exclusive  privi- 
leges to  one  or  the  other  of  the  high  contracting  parties.  No  such  privileges 
were  contemplated.  On  the  contrary,  the  whole  tenor  of  the  compact  was 
favorable  to  free  trade  and  against  the  principle  of  protection.  He  remarked 
with  some  humor  that  Protection,  dwelling  formerly  in  palaces  and  other 
high  places  of  the  earth  and  more  recently  finding  refuge  in  certain  corners 
and  holes  of  the  commercial  world,  was  now  about  to  be  ejected  from  his 
last  hiding  places.  He  showed  in  the  next  place  that  the  duties  which  were 
struck  off  by  the  provisions  of  the  treaty  were  not  revenues  in  fact,  but  pro- 
tective tariffs.  He  demonstrated  with  facts  and  figures  the  advantage  both 
to  England  and  France  of  the  system  of  free  interchange  which  had  been 
adopted.  He  pursued  the  subject,  in  illustration  of  the  effects  of  the  treaty, 
the  duties  on  spirits,  and  showed  how  the  removal  of  duties  brought  those 
articles  on  which  the  duties  had  rested  within  reach  of  an  ever-enlarging 
class"  of  consumers. 

Thus  had  it  been  in  the  case  of  tea.  Only  a  century  ago  that  article 
had  been  a  luxury  of  the  rich,  selling  at  twenty  shillings  the  pound.  Tea, 
by  the  reduction  of  the  duties  thereon,  had  become  the  poor  man's  as  well 


300  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE, 

as  the  rich  man's  beverage.  So  might  it  be  in  the  case  of  wine.  There  was 
in  England  a  great  demand  for  French  wines,  and  the  high  price  at  which 
thev  were  sold  tended  to  suoraest  the  adtdteration  of  the  wines  and  other 
frauds  on  the  part  of  wine  merchants.  With  the  removal  of  the  duty  pure 
wines  would  be  imported  at  a  greatly  reduped  price. 

The  speaker  next  reverted  to  the  magnificent  work  accomplished  by 
Mr.  Cobden  in  negotiating  the  treaty.  He  declared  that  he  was  unwilling 
to  pass  from  the  subject  of  the  French  treaty  without  paying  a  deserved 
tribute  to  the  tioo  persons  who  had  been  chiefly  instrumental  in  obtaining 
it.  "  I  am  bound,"  said  Mr.  Gladstone,  "  to  bear  this  witness,  at  any  rate, 
with  regard  to  the  Emperor  of  the  French  :  that  he  has  given  the  most 
unequivocal  proofs  of  sincerity  and  earnestness  in  the  progress  of  this  great 
work,  a  work  which  he  has  prosecuted  with  clear-sighted  resolution,  not, 
doubtless,  for  British  purposes,  but  in  the  spirit  of  enlightened  patriotism, 
with  a  view  to  commercial  reforms  at  home  and  to  the  advantage  and  hap- 
piness of  his  own  people  by  means  of  those  reforms.  With  regard  to  Mr. 
Cobden,  speaking  as  I  do  at  a  time  when  every  angry  passion  has  passed 
away,  I  cannot  help  expressing  our  obligations  to  him  for  the  labor  he  has, 
at  no  small  personal  sacrifice,  bestowed  upon  a  measure  which  he — not  the 
least  among  the  apostles  of  free  trade — believes  to  be  one  of  the  most  mem- 
orable triumphs  free  trade  has  ever  achieved.  Rare  is  the  privilege  of  an)' 
man  who,  having  fourteen  years  ago  rendered  to  his  country  one  signal  and 
splendid  service,  now  again,  within  the  same  brief, span  of  life,  decorated 
neither  by  rank  nor  title,  bearing  no  mark  to  distinguish  him  from  the  people 
whom  he  loves,  has  been  permitted  again  to  perform  a  great  and  memorable 
service  to  his  sovereign  and  to  his  country." 

Passing  on  from  the  consideration  of  the  French  treaty,  Mr.  Gladstone 
took  up  the  serious  and  most  difficult  question  of  the  proposed  reduction 
in  the  customs  duties  of  the  kingdom.  He  said  that  his  scheme  provided 
for  such  reduction  over  and  above  that  already  referred  to  by  an  aggregate 
of  nine  hundred  and  ten  thousand  pounds.  He  then  gave  a  list  of  com- 
modities on  which  the  duties  were  to  be  abrogated,  namely,  butter,  tallow, 
cheese,  oranges,  lemons,  eggs,  and  several  other  articles  of  like  character. 
On  these  he  proposed  to  throw  off  a  duty  amounting  to  three  hundred  and 
eighty  thousand  pounds  annually.  He  presented  another  list,  including 
timber,  currants,  raisins,  figs,  and  hops,  on  which  the  duty  would  be  relin- 
quished to  an  aggregate  of  six  hundred  and  fifty-eight  thousand  pounds. 
To  meet  the  sum  of  these  two  reductions  he  would  introduce  certain  penny 
rates,  to  be  explained  farther  on,  amounting  to  nine  hundred  and  eighty- 
two  thousand  pounds.  He  estimated  the  loss  from  the  abolition  of  the 
French  duties  at  two  million  one  hundred  and  forty-six  thousand  pounds, 
against  which  he  hoped  to  offset  at  least  a  half  by  the  penny  rates  referred  to. 


MINISTER    OF    FINAN'CE    UNDER    PALMERSTON.  3OI 

Coming  directly  to  articles  of  English  manufactare,  Mr.  Gladstone  said 
that  he  would  abolish  the  excise  duty  on  paper.  This  was  touching  on 
dangerous  ground.  The  speaker  held  that  the  cheapening  of  paper  by  the 
removal  of  the  duty  would  greatly  promote  the  dissemination  of  cheap  lit- 
erature. He  was  able  to  say  that  the  newspaper  press  of  Great  Britain 
favored  this  measure.  The  House  of  Commons  had  already  passed  judg- 
ment on  the  pri7iciple  of  the  paper  excise,  and  had  condemned  it.  The 
retention  of  the  duty  tended  to  make  literature  a  luxury  of  the  rich.  The 
speaker  showed  that  the  removal  of  the  duty  referred  to,  since  it  affected 
all  maufactures  of  fiber  convertible  into  paper,  would  extend  to  a  vast  range 
of  articles  of  which  at  least  sixty-nine  trades  were  in  demand.  He  argued 
that  the  institution  of  the  duty  had  destroyed  the  small  paper  factories  of 
England  and  had  substituted  the  great  concerns  located  here  and  there. 
This  process  would  be  reversed  by  the  removal  of  the  tax,  and  local  enter- 
prise would  again  flourish.  In  proportion  as  these  local  enterprises  should 
flourish  the  poverty  which  existed  here  and  there  would  be  alleviated  ;  the 
taxes  for  the  support  of  the  poor  would  be  lessened.  He  cited  instances  to 
establish  the  truth  of  this  argumentation.  His  proposition,  therefore,  was 
that  from  and  after  the  ist  of  July,  i860,  the  duty  on  paper  should  be 
abolished. 

The  speaker  next  took  up  the  question  of  the  excise  on  hops.  Instead 
of  the  present  system  he  would  remove  the  prohibition  on  malt,  and  fix  a 
duty  on  that  commodity  of  three  shillings  the  bushel.  By  these  means  he 
reckoned  that  the  consumers  in  Great  Britain  would  be  relieved  of  taxation 
to  the  extent  of  nearly  four  million  pounds,  and  that  the  revenue  would 
lose,  according  to  his  calculations,  but  little  over  two  million  pounds.  The 
latter  sum  was  just  about  what  the  treasury  would  gain  in  the  following 
year  by  the  expiration  of  the  annuities  paid  by  the  government. 

Thus  the  speaker  proceeded  with  the  exposition  of  his  scheme. 
"  There  would  be,"  he  said,  "  for  the  following  year  forty-eight  articles  under 
customs  duty,  and  for  the  year  after  that  fortj^-four  articles.  Of  these  the 
most  important  were  distilled  spirits,  tea,  tobacco,  sugar,  wine,  coffee,  corn 
(that  is  the  cereal  grains),  currants,  and  timber.  He  thought  that  he  could 
realize  from  the  malt  and  hop  taxes  about  a  million  four  hundred  thousand 
pounds. in  the  fiscal  year  ensuing.  This  completed  the  explication  ot  the 
major  division  of  his  subject  relating  to  the  abolition  of  duties.  It  remained 
to  consider  by  what  means  he  intended  to  make  up  the  loss  to  the  aggre- 
gate revenues  of  the  kingdom. 

Here  the  speaker  came  to  the  subject  of  the  income  tax.  He  said 
that  out  of  the  necessity  of  the  case  that  tax  must  be  retained.  The  total 
deficiency  which  must  be  provided  for  he  estimated  at  nine  million  four 
hundred   thousand   pounds.     To    meet   this    he  proposed   that  the    income 


302  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

tax  should  be  continued  at  the  rate  of  tenpence  the  pound  for  all  incomes 
of  a  hundred  and  fifty  pounds  a  year  and  over,  and  at  sevenpence  the 
pound  for  incomes  below  the  sum  just  named.  This  tax  he  would  fix  for 
a  single  year,  and  would  require  within  that  year  the  payment  of  three 
fourths  of  the  amount  accruing-,  leaving  the  other  fourth  to  be  collected  in 
the  following  year.  From  this  source  he  would  expect  to  realize  eight  mil- 
lion four  hundred  and  seventy-two  thousand  pounds.  Adding  this  to  the 
revenues  otherwise  provided,  he  would  have  a  total  income  ot  seventy 
million  five  hundred  and  sixty-four  thousand  pounds.  The  expenditure  he 
estimated  at  seventy  million  one  hundred  thousand  pounds  ;  the  balance 
showing  four  hundred  and  sixty-four  thousand  pounds  in  favor  of  the 
treasury. 

In  conclusion  Mr.  Gladstone  reverted  to  the  fact  that  the  budget  before 
the  House  involved  a  great  if  not  a  Complete  reform  in  the  tariff  system  of 
Great  Britain,  His  proposals,  he  said,  embraced  a  large  remission  of  taxa- 
tion, and  last  of  all,  though  not  least,  they  included  as  a  part  of  their  sub- 
stance the  commercial  treaty  with  France.  To  that  treaty  he  did  not 
doubt  there  would  be  objections  ;  but,  he  continued,  we  confidently  recom- 
mend it  not  only  on  moral  and  social  and  political,  but  also  on  economical 
and  physical  grounds.  Finally  the  speaker  concluded  what  was,  without 
doubt,  the  most  remarkable  budget  scheme  and  striking  representation  of 
the  same  ever  thus  far  made  before  the  British  House  of  Commons,  as 
follows  :  "  There  were  times,  now  long  gone  by,  when  sovereigns  made 
progress  through  the  land,  and  when,  at  the  proclamation  of  their  heralds, 
they  caused  to  be  scattered  whole  showers  of  coin  among  the  people  who 
thronged  upon  their  steps.  That  may  have  been  a  goodly  spectacle  ;  but 
it  is  also  a  goodly  spectacle,  and  one  adapted  to  the  altered  spirit  and 
circumstances  of  our  times,  when  our  sovereign  is  enabled,  throuofh  the 
wisdom  of  her  great  council,  assembled  in  Parliament  around  her,  again  to 
scatter  blessings  among  her  subjects  by  means  of  wise  and  prudent  laws, 
of  laws  which  do  not  sap  in  any  respect  the  foundations  of  duty  or  of 
manhood,  but  which  strike  away  the  shackles  from  the  arm  of  industry, 
which  give  new  incentives  and  new  rewards  to  toil,  and  which  win  more 
and  more  for  the  throne  and  for  the  institutions  of  the  country  the  grati- 
tude, the  confidence,  and  the  love  of  a  united  people.  Let  me  say,  even 
to  those  who  are  anxious,  and  justly  anxious,  on  the  subject  of  our  national 
defenses,  that  that  which  stirs  the  flame  of  patriotism  in  men,  that  which 
binds  them  in  one  heart  and  soul,  that  which  gives  them  increased  confi- 
dence in  their  rulers,  that  which  makes  them  feel  and  know  that  they  are 
treated  with  justice  and  that  we  who  represent  them  are  laboring  incessantly 
and  earnestly  for  their  good,  is  in  itself  no  small,  no  feeble,  and  no  tran- 
sitory part  of  national  defense.     We  recommend   these  proposals  to  your 


MINISTER    OF    FINANCE    UNDER    PALMERSTON. 


30: 


impartial  and  searching  inquiry.  We  do  not  presume,  indeed,  to  make  a 
claim  on  your  acknowledgments  ;  but  neither  do  we  desire  to  draw  on  your 
unrequited  confidence  nor  to  lodge  an  appeal  to  your  compassion.  We 
ask  for  nothing  more  than  your  dispassionate  judgment,  and  for  nothing 
less  ;  we  know  that  our  plan  will  receive  that  justice  at  your  hands,  and  we 
confidently  anticipate  on  its  behalf  the  approval  alike  of  the  Parliament 
and  the  nation." 

Though  there  might  be  great  differences  of  opinion  in  the  House  of 
Commons  as  to  the  merit  and  expediency  of  the  recommendations  made  by 
the  chancellor  of  the  exchequer,  differences  with  respect  to  the  ability  with 
which  the  budget  was  presented  there  could  be  none.  Long  since  the 
speaker  had  established  his  claim  to  be  one  of  the  foremost,  if  not  the  fore- 
most, British  orator  of  his  epoch.  His  bearing  was  parliamentary  by  the 
highest  definition  of  that  term.  He  had  all  the  accessories  of  the  ideal  min- 
ister. His  voice,  his  gesticulation,  his  occasional  humor,  his  flight  from  the 
prosaic  into  the  oratorical  and  the  poetical,  his  dignity  and  courtesy,  all 
combined  to  win  for  him  the  unbounded  applauses  of  his  party  and  the 
admiration  of  all  liberal-minded  Englishmen.  The  signs  of  such  admiration 
were  abundant  on  the  areat  occasion  just  described.  Notwithstanding  his 
recent  illness  he  bore  the  stress  and  exhaustion  of  a  four  hours'  oration 
without  apparent  weakening  or  loss  of  effectiveness.  It  was  said  for  long 
by  those  who  were  present  that  he  concluded  the  presentation  of  his  budget 
with  the  easy  air  and  manner  of  one  who  had  just  finished  a  few  extempo- 
raneous remarks  on  a  trivial  topic  of  the  hour. 

Would  the  budget  be  accepted  by  the  House.'*  If  there  should  be  a 
battle  would  it  be  victorious  for  the  chancellor  of  the  exchequer  or  defeat 
for  him  and  his  cause  ?  It  was  soon  manifest  that  there  would  be  spirited 
debate  and  vigorous  opposition.  In  the  first  place  the  shipowning  business 
broke  out  with  the  allegation  that  the  Gladstonian  scheme  would  weaken 
the  British  marine  by  strengthening  that  of  France.  The  plan,  it  was  said, 
did  not  put  the  shipping  interests  of  Great  Britain  and  France  on  an  equal 
footing,  but  rather  disparaged  the  home  industry  in  favor  of  the  foreign.  In 
the  next  place,  the  eating  house  managers  of  London  and  other  leading 
cities  protested  because  the  budget  contained  a  provision  for  licenses  to 
their  establishments.  Other  especial  interests  joined  the  chorus,  but  the 
general  opinion  seemed  to  be  well  satisfied  with  the  result. 

The  boards  of  trade  in  the  leading  cities,  particularly  in  the  manufac- 
turing centers,  gave  emphatic  approval  and  sent  petitions  to  Parliament  in 
favor  of  the  budget.  The  English  radicals,  the  old  agitators  and  free 
traders,  as  far  down  the  column  of  democracy  as  the  station  of  John  Bright, 
assented  to  the  scheme,  and  the  heart  of  the  country  seemed  ready  for  the 
reform  budget  of  i860.     In  the   House  of  Commons  Mr.  Disraeli,  without 


304  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

directly  assailing  any  principle  or  recommendation  of  the  budget,  moved, 
"  That  this  House  does  not  think  fit  to  go  into  committee  on  the  Customs 
Act  with  a  view  to  the  reduction  or  repeal  of  the  duties  referred  to  in  the 
treaty  of  commerce  between  her  majesty  and  the  Emperor  of  the  P'rench 
until  it  shall  have  considered  and  assented  to  the  engagements  in  that 
treaty." 

In  supporting  his  resolution  Mr.  Disraeli  argued  against  the  treaty  with 
France,  against  the  method  of  making  it,  against  the  government  for  using 
such  a  method,  against  Richard  Cobden  as  the  author  of  the  method.  It 
could  not  be  expected,  however,  that  Cobden  could  gain  by  any  means  the 
approval  of  one  who  differed  from  him  toto  ccslo  in  the  universe  of  British 
politics. 

The  reply  of  Mr.  Gladstone  was  brief  and  brilliant.  He  made  a  coun- 
tercharge on  Mr.  Disraeli,  showing  that  it  was  absurd  to  suppose  that  her 
majesty  and  her  majesty's  government  would  make  an  illegal  compact  with 
a  foreign  power.  He  disclaimed  for  himself  a  certain  intimation  of  a  char- 
itable sort  that  his  rival  had  sarcastically  offered,  claiming  that  the  treaty  of 
France  had  not  been  inadvertently  made,  but  with  prudence  and  forethought. 
He  went  on  to  show  that  there  were  well-established  and  undeniable  prec- 
edents which  her  majesty's  government  had  followed.  No  less  a  personage 
than  William  Pitt  in  office  had  established  the  principle  on  which  the  recent 
commercial  treaty  had  been  effected.  The  result  of  the  debate  showed 
something  more  than  the  party  majority  In  the  vote  against  Disraeli's 
resolution. 

Another  attack  came  from  Mr.  Du  Cane,  who  proposed  to  impeach  the 
principle  on  which  the  budget  rested.  When  his  friends  induced  him  to 
withhold  a  motion  to  this  Intent  he  found  opportunity  to  introduce  anotlier 
declaring  that  the  proposed  abolition  of  duties  was  inexpedient,  and  that 
the  continuance  of  the  income  tax  at  an  Increased  rate  would  prove  a  shock 
to  the  country.  To  this  resolution  the  mover  spoke  at  considerable  length, 
and  found  the  usual  arguments  to  fortify  his  position.  The  chancellor  of  the 
exchequer,  however,  was  able  to  destroy  the  Du  Cane  resolution,  or  at  least 
to  bury  It  under  a  majority  of  a  hundred  and  sixteen  votes. 

The  real  point  of  danger,  however,  to  the  Gladstone  scheme  lay  In  the 
recommendation  for  the  abolition  of  the  duty  on  paper.  This  part  of  the 
scheme  touched  and  tended  to  transform  an  important  home  industry  of 
Great  Britain.  Not  only  the  interest  thus  disturbed,  namely,  the  interest 
engaged  In  the  manufacture  of  paper,  but  several  other  correlated  interests 
were  excited  and  alarmed  ;  and  the  party  in  opposition  was  strengthened 
with  a  few  recruits.  Sir  Stafford  Henry  Northcote  offered  a  resolution  to 
the  effect  that  the  existing  state  of  the  finances  of  the  countr)-  made  it  unde- 
sirable to  proceed  further  with  tlie  bill  repealing  the  duty  on  paper.     That 


MINISTER    OF    FINANCE    UNDER    PALMERSTON.  305 

bill  had  now  come  to  its  third  reading-,  and  the  time  was  critical.  The 
opposition  gained  considerably,  and  the  majority  against  the  Northcote 
amendment  was  only  nine  votes. 

This  decision  of  the  House,  however,  did  not  settle  the  matter  finally. 
The  debate  broke  out  anew  on  the  critical  examination  of  the  recommenda- 
tion abolishing  the  paper  tarift'.  It  was  found  that  the  duty  on  domestic 
paper  was  to  be  removed,  and  the  duty  on  foreign  paper  also.  This  involved 
the  question  of  the  relative  cheapness  of  rags  in  England  and  on  the  Con- 
tinent. It  was  held  by  the  opposition  that  continental  rags  were  cheaper 
than  British  rags;  for  which  reason  the  French  manufacturers  of  paper 
would  be  able,  under  a  system  of  absolute  freedom  in  the  paper  trade,  to 
undersell  the  manufacturers  of  England.  And  so  the  argument  went  on  and 
on ;  the  party  of  the  ministry  contending  that  the  principle  of  absolute  free 
trade  should  not  be  abandoned  by  Great  Britain,  whose  toes  soever  were 
pinched,  and  the  orators  of  the  opposition  contending  that  British  interests 
must  not  be  disparaged  or  put  at  disadvantage  by  British  legislation. 
Finally  the  budget  as  a  whole  came  to  the  crisis  of  a  vote,  and  was  accepted 
by  a  fair  party  majority  in  the  House  of  Commons. 

But  now  an  ordeal  of  another  kind  had  to  be  met.  There  was  the 
House  of  Lords.  That  conservative  body,  always  opposed  to  change, 
always  arraying  itself  against  reform,  always  in  the  way  of  progress  and 
transformation,  showed  itself  in  its  accustomed  mood.  The  paper  interest 
of  the  kingdom  was  easily  able  to  find  a  voice  among  their  lordships.  Lord 
Monteagle,  supported  by  Lord  Derby,  started  a  movement  to  defeat  at 
least  so  much  of  the  budget  as  related  to  the  abolition  of  the  duty  on  paper. 

As  soon  as  this  was  known  the  country  was  aroused.  The  general 
interests  of  manufacture  and  industry  arrayed  themselves  against  the  special 
interest  of  paper.  Committees  from  several  places,  including  representative 
men  from  a  variety  of  industrial  concerns,  appealed  to  Lord  Derby  to  with- 
draw his  opposition.  It  appears  that  his  lordship  was  surprised  at  this 
manifestation  of  public  sentiment  ;  at  any  rate,  he  began  to  hedge  against 
the  results  by  saying  that  his  opposition  extended,  not  to  the  principle  of 
removing  the  tax  on  paper,  but  to  the  question  of  the  advisability  of  doing 
it  in  the  present  state  of  the  public  revenues.  This  admission  that  the  sup- 
porters of  the  budget  in  its  entirety  were  right  at  least  in  principle  was  fatal 
to  Lord  Derby's  position,  and  the  breach  in  his  defenses  was  still  further 
widened  by  the  admission  that  all  taxes  must  originate  in  the  House  of 
Commons,  be  determined  by  that  body,  be  abrogated  by  that  body  if  at  all 
— this  under  the  principles  of  the  British  Constitution. 

This  was  really  to  give  away  the  whole  argument  against  the   removal 
of  the  duty.     The  friends  of  that  measure  made  a  strong  rail)'.     The  whole 
ministerial  party,  from  its  most  radical    to  its  most  conservative  member, 
20 


3o6  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

Strongly  defended  the  logic  of  tlie  governmental  position.  There  was  no 
doubt  that  the  House  of  Commons  was  fixed  in  its  determination  favoring 
the  budget  as  a  whole,  and  that  the  country  was  with  the  House  ;  but  in  the 
Lords  an  adverse  fate  awaited.  The  bill  for  the  approval  of  the  new  scheme, 
coming  to  the  crisis  of  a  vote  in  that  august  body,  was  rejected  by  a  majority 
of  eighty-nine. 

The  issue  was  thus  sharply  made  up.  The  situation  was  sufficiently 
critical.  The  House  must  either  recede  from  its  position  or  the  Lords  must 
yield  to  the  will  of  the  nation.  It  was  not  likely  that  the  lower  House, 
fortified  as  it  was  by  the  voice  of  the  country,  would  yield.  On  the  5th  of 
July,  i860,  Lord  Palmerston  offered  the  following  three  resolutions  : 

"  I.  That  the  right  of  granting  aids  and  supplies  to  the  crown  is  in  the 
Commons  alone,  as  an  essential  part  of  their  constitution,  and  the  limitation 
of  all  such  grants  as  to  matter,  manner,  measure,  and  time  is  only  in  them. 

"  2.  That  although  the  Lords  have  exercised  the  power  of  rejecting  bills 
of  several  descriptions  relating  to  taxation  by  negativing  the  whole,  yet  the 
exercise  of  that  power  by  them  has  not  been  frequent,  and  is  justly  regarded 
by  this  House  with  peculiar  jealousy  as  affecting  the  right  of  the  Commons 
to  grant  the  supplies,  and  to  provide  the  ways  and  means  for  the  service 
of  the  year. 

"  ^.  That  to  gruard  for  the  future  against  an  undue  exercise  of  that 
power  by  the  Lords,  and  to  secure  to  the  Commons  their  rightful  control 
over  taxation  and  supply,  this  House  has  in  its  own  hands  the  power  so  to 
impose  and  remit  taxes  and  to  frame  bills  of  supply  that  the  right  of  the 
Commons  as  to  the  matter,  manner,  measure,  and  time  may  be  maintained 
Inviolate." 

One  object  of  Lord  Palmerston  In  offering  these  resolutions  was  to 
restore  and  consolidate  the  majority  in  the  House  favorable  to  the  abolition 
of  the  duty  on  paper.  While  the  budget  was  under  discussion  and  passing 
through  its  readings  the  ministerial  majority  had  in  one  Instance  fallen  as 
low  as  nine  votes,  and  that  particular  vote  had  been  given  on  the  question 
of  the  paper  duty.  This  decline  In  the  majority  favorable  to  the  budget  as 
a  whole  had  encouraged  the  Lords  In  their  attitude  of  hostility.  The  Pal- 
merston resolutions  restored  the  full  majority  of  the  House  and  put  that 
body  in  the  position  of  standing  stoutly  for  its  rights. 

Mr.  Gladstone  made  another  speech  before  the  House  on  the  subject 
of  the  disao-reement  with  the  Lords.  He  declared  that  the  resolutions  of 
Lord  Palmerston  did  not  go  far  enough  In  asserting  the  rights  of  the  House 
of  Commons.  Indeed,  he  thought  that  the  precedents  which  the  noble  lord 
had  cited  did  not  reach  the  principle  involved  in  the  subject  of  disagreement 
between  the  two  Houses.  The  House  of  Lords  might  well  advise  changes 
in    a   bill    covering   expenditure    from  the  public    treasury.     That  was   one 


MINISTER    OF    FINANCE    UNDER    PALMERSTON.  307 

question.  Quite  another  question  was  the  assumption  by  the  House  of 
Lords  of  the  right  to  reject  a  reduction  or  repeal  of  taxes.  Recently  the 
question  had  suggested  itself  to  her  majesty's  government  whether  a  cer- 
tain reduction  of  the  revenues  to  the  amount  of  a  million  a  hundred  and 
twenty-five  thousand  pounds  would  better  be  effected  by  striking  off  the 
duty  on  tea  or  by  removing  that  on  paper.  The  House  had  chosen  to 
remove  the  duty  on  paper.  This  "had  been  done  with  strict  reference,  not 
to  the  popularity  of  the  measure,  but  to  the  interest  and  honor  of  Great 
Britain.  The  riofht  of  the  House  to  act  in  this  manner  was  sinorle  and  abso- 
lute.  The  House  could  not  relinquish  its  exclusive  prerogative  to  deal  with 
such  questions.  The  speaker  concluded  by  giving  notice  of  his  purpose  to 
take  up  the  question  again  and  to  offer  a  plan  of  practical  solution. 

This  Mr.  Gladstone  did  soon  afterward.  Before  a  full  House  he  offered 
a  resolution  to  reduce  the  duty  on  foreign  paper.  He  showed  that  this 
course  had  now  become  necessary  under  the  provision  of  die  commercial 
treaty  with  France.  It  could  not  be  doubted  that  the  very  action  which  he 
now  proposed  was  contemplated  when  that  treaty  was  made.  Moreover,  it 
had  become  a  simple  question  of  justice  to  the  dealers  in  paper  and  the 
makers  of  it.  Neither  could  the  manufacture  be  carried  on  nor  the  trade 
in  paper  continue  unless  the  question  of  the  duty  should  be  definitely  set- 
tled. The  government  was  now  under  oblioation  to  observe  the  terms  of 
the  French  treaty.  Moreover,  the  issue  here  and  now  presented  was  the 
final  contest  between  free  tracie  and  protection  in  Great  Britain.  Protection 
was  sprawling  its  last  ;  free  trade  had  become  the  policy  of  the  empire.  The 
friends  of  that  policy  must  now  stand  out  and  be  counted  in  their  places  as 
against  the  friends  of  the  abandoned  system  of  the  past.  The  House  of 
Commons,  the  speaker  said,  was  bound  by  both  honor  and  policy  to  adopt 
the  resolution  which  he  proposed.  The  House  acted  accordingly.  A  stout 
majority  declared  in  favor  of  the  Gladstonian  proposition.  The  other  para- 
graphs of  his  resolution  w^ere  passed  in  like  manner,  and  the  controversy 
was  ended  for  the  present  by  the  reaffirmation  of  the  Commons  in  their 
stand  against  the  Lords. 

The  reader  will  recall  the  fact  that  before  the  presentation  of  the 
budget  of  i860  Lord  John  Russell  had  introduced  a  measure  looking  to  a 
parliamentary  reform.  The  proposal  was  to  add  to  the  "ten-pound  occupa- 
tion franchise"  in  country  districts  a  security  that  said  franchise  should  be 
actual,  and  not  fictitious,  and  at  the  same  time  to  make  a  six-pound  franchise 
for  the  borouo^hs.  It  had  been  claimed  that  this  measure  would  add  about 
two  hundred  thousand  suffraees  to  the  borouQfhs  of  the  kino-dom.  Lord 
Russell's  measure  also  included  the  reapportionment  of  the  seats  in  Parlia- 
ment, and  made  one  condition  of  the  suffrage  to  be  that  the  elector  should 
be  a  taxpayer  for  the  support  of  the  poor. 


308  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

While  this  bill  was  under  discussion  Mr.  Gladstone  went  so  far  in  its 
support  as  to  justify  Lord  Russell  on  the  score  of  consistency.  He  showed 
that  the  pending  measure  had  been  frequently  promised.  It  had  come  to 
the  House,  not  unexpectedly,  but  under  pledge  that  it  would  be  presented. 
He  showed  the  orroundlessness  of  that  alarm  which  made  the  Russell  Bill 
an  element  of  danger  to  the  county  constituencies.  He  showed  that  those 
who  were  to  become  electors  under  the  provisions  of  the  bill  were  in  rank 
and  intelligence  fully  capable  of  having  and  exercising  the  right  of  suffrage. 
He  compared  the  new  classes  contemplated  with  the  electors  of  the 
boroughs,  and  found  no  disparagement  of  the  former.  He  held  that  the 
suffrage  might  be  enlarged  with  perfect  safety  so  as  to  include  the  six-pound 
qualification  for  voters  in  the  boroughs.  The  argument  was  sufficiently  con- 
clusive, and  from  the  American  point  of  view^  so  obvious  as  to  require  no 
confirmation.  Nevertheless  the  signs  of  opposition  and  indifference  in  the 
House  were  so  manifest  that  Lord  Russell  withdrew  his  measure  from 
further  consideration. 

Near  the  close  of  the  spring  session  of  Parliament,  i860,  namely,  on  the 
1 6th  of  April  in  that  year,  Mr.  Gladstone  was  honored  with  installation  as 
Lord  Rector  of  the  University  of  Edinburgh.  The  university  gave  him  on 
the  occasion  the  honorary  degree  of  Doctor  of  Laws.  The  English  and 
Scotch  usage  on  such  occasions  is  that  the  newly  installed  rector  shall 
deliver  an  address  suitable  to  the  event.  Mr.  Gladstone,  appearing  before 
the  assembled  university,  was  introduced  by  Sir  David  Brewster,  and  in 
beginning  his  address  said: 

"  Principal,  professors,  and  students  of  the  University  of  Edinburgh,  I 
cannot  estimate  lightly  the  occasion  on  which  I  meet  you,  especially  as  it 
regards  the  younger  and  larger  part  of  my  academical  audience.  The 
franchise,  which  you  have  exercised  in  my  favor,  is  itself  of  a  nature  to 
draw  attention  ;  for  the  Legislature  of  our  own  day  has,  by  a  new  delibera- 
tive act,  invested  you,  the  youngest  members  of  the  university,  with  a 
definite  and  not  inconsiderable  influence  in  the  formation  of  that  court 
which  is  to  exercise,  upon  appeal,  the  highest  control  over  its  proceedings. 
This  is  a  measure  which  would  hardly  have  been  adopted  in  any  other  land 
than  our  own.  Yet  it  is  also  one,  in  the  best  sense,  agreeable  to  the  spirit 
of  our  country  and  of  its  institutions  ;  for  we  think  it  eminently  British  to 
admit  the  voice  of  the  governed  in  the  choice  of  governors  ;  to  seek,  through 
diversity  of  elements,  for  harmony  and  unity  of  result  ;  and  to  train  men  for 
the  discharge  of  manly  duties  by  letting  them  begin  their  exercise  betimes." 

The  speaker  took  for  his  subject  "  The  Work  of  Universities."  He 
referred  the  students  to  the  fact  that  he  was  widely  separated  from  them  in 
the  scale  of  years,  and  that  their  future  was  his  past.  He  said  that  each 
generation  of  men  labors  for  that  which  succeeds  it,  and  that  the  present  is 


MINISTER    OF    FINANCE    UNDER    PALMERSTON.  3O9 

therefore  always  a  sum  total  of  the  past.  The  present  is  indebted  to  the 
past.  There  is  a  sense  in  which  each  human  being  begins  life  as  though  he 
were  the  firstborn  of  his  race.  In  another  sense  each  one  is  an  epitome  of 
the  past.  Each  generation  transmits  a  modified  nature  to  the  next.  The 
progress  of  mankind  is  thus  a  checkered  and  intercepted  progress.  The 
progress  of  the  world  is  the  advancement  of  mankind  rather  than  the  pro- 
motion of  the  individual.  Each  aeneration  of  men  is  bound  to  accumulate 
new  treasures  for  the  race,  and  to  leave  the  world  richer  on  its  departure. 
The  university  is  an  institution  for  the  promotion  of  the  common  move- 
ment. In  modern  times  it  is  a  Christian  institution.  Great  as  were  the 
Greeks,  their  better  nature  was  scarcely  developed  at  all,  and  indeed  was 
rather  maimed  in  its  supreme  capacity  ;  that  is,  in  its  relation  to  God.  We 
watch  with  trembling  hope  the  course  of  the  Christian  civilization  which  has 
succeeded  the  pagan.  The  question  arises  whether  our  civilization  will  go 
the  same  course  as  its  predecessors,  and  perish  like  its  older  types. 

The  speaker  then  went  on  to  discuss  the  strength  and  the  weakness  of 
Christian  civilization  and  the  place  of  the  university  therein.  "  I  do  not," 
said  he,  "  enter  into  the  question  from  what  source  the  university  etymo- 
logically  derives  its  name.  At  the  very  least  it  is  a  name  most  aptly  sym- 
bolizing the  purpose  for  which  the  thing  itself  exists.  For  the  work  of  the 
university  as  such  covers  the  whole  field  of  knowledge,  human  and  divine  ; 
the  whole  field  of  our  nature  in  all  its  powers  ;  the  whole  field  of  tii^ie,  in 
binding  together  successive  generations  as  they  pass  onward  in  the  prosecu- 
tion of  their  common  destiny;  aiding  each,  both  to  sow  its  proper  seed,  and 
to  reap  its  proper  harvest  from  what  has  been  sown  before  ;  storing  up  into 
its  own  treasure  house  the  spoils  of  every  new  venture  in  the  domain  of 
mental  enterprise,  and  ever  binding  the  present  to  pay  over  to  the  future  an 
acknowledgment  at  least  of  the  debt  which  for  itself  it  owes  the  past.  .  .  . 

"The  idea  of  the  university,  as  we  find  it  historically  presented  to  us  in 
the  Middle  Age,  w-as  to  methodize,  perpetuate,  and  apply  all  knowledge  which 
existed,  and  to  adopt  and  take  up  into  itself  every  new  branch  as  it  came 
successively  into  existence.  These  various  kinds  of  knowledge  w^ere  applied 
for  the  various  uses  of  life,  such  as  the  time  apprehended  them.  But  the 
great  truth  was  always  held,  and  always  kept  in  the  center  of  the  system, 
that  man  himself  is  the  crowning  wonder  of  creation  ;  that  the  study  of  his 
nature  is  the  noblest  study  that  the  world  affords  ;  and  that,  to  his  advance- 
ment and  improvement,  all  undertakings,  all  professions,  all  arts,  all  knowl- 
edge, all  institutions,  are  subordinated,  as  means  and  instruments  to  their 
end.  .  .  . 

"  We  can  hardly  expect  that  human  institutions  should,  without  limit 
of  time,  retain  the  flexible  and  elastic  tissues  of  their  youth.  Moreover, 
universities  in  particular,  as  they  have   grown   old   and  great,  have   come  to 


3IO  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

interlace  at  many  points  with  the  interests  and  concerns  of  that  outer  world 
which  has  but  little  sympathy  with  their  proper  work.  But  for  these  and 
such  like  causes  they  might  have  displayed  at  this  day  an  organization  as 
complete,  relatively  to  the  present  state  of  knowledge  and  inquiry,  as  was 
that  which  they  possessed  some  centuries  ago.  .  .  . 

"  Universities  were,  in  truth,  a  great  mediating  power  between  the  high 
and  the  low,  between  the  old  and  the  new,  between  speculation  and  practice, 
between  authority  and  freedom.  Of  these  last  words,  in  their  application 
to  the  political  sphere,  modern  history  and  the  experience  of  our  own  time 
afford  abundant  exemplification.  In  countries  which  enjoy  political  liberty 
the  universities  are  usually  firm  supports  of  the  established  order  of  things, 
but  in  countries  under  absolute  government  they  acquire  a  bias  toward 
innovation.  Some  excess  may  be  noted  in  these  tendencies  respectively  ; 
but,  In  the  main,  they  bear  witness  against  greater  and  more  pernicious 
excesses.  To  take  instances:  the  University  of  Edinburgh  did  not  very 
easily  accommodate  Itself  to  the  revolution  of  1688  ;  It  was  long  in  the 
eighteenth  century  before  Cambridge  returned  Whig  representatives  to 
Parliament,  and  I  believe  the  very  latest  of  the  Jacobite  risings  and  riots 
occurred  in  Oxford.  On  the  other  hand,  in  some  continental  countries  it 
has  been  the  practice,  during  the  present  century,  when  the  political  hori- 
zon threatened,  at  once  to  close  the  universities  as  the  probable  centers  of 
agitation — a  proceeding  so  strange,  according  to  our  Ideas  and  experience, 
that  the  statement  may  sound  hardly  credible.  Even  within  the  last  few 
weeks  we  may  all  have  seen  notices  in  the  public  journals  of  movements  in 
the  University  of  Rome  itself  adverse  to  the  pontifical  government.  .  .  . 

"  It  is  Indeed  a  fashion  with  some  to  ridicule  the  method  of  disputation 
which  was  In  use  in  the  Middle  Age  universities  for  testing  talents  and 
acquirements.  I  demur  to  the  propriety  of  the  proceeding.  It  might  be  as 
just  to  ridicule  the  clumsiness  of  their  weapons  or  their  tools.  These  dis- 
putations were  clumsy  weapons,  but  the  question,  after  all,  Is,  How  did  the 
men  use  them  7  Let  us  confess  it,  the  defect  was  more  than  made  good 
by  the  zeal  with  which  In  those  times  learning  was  pursued.  Their  true 
test  is  in  the  capacity  and  vigor  which  they  gave  to  the  mind,  and  this  trial 
they  can  well  abide.  Further,  they  Involved  a  noteworthy  tribute  to  the 
principle  of  freedom.  And  there  was  something,  not  sound  onl)-,  but  felic- 
itous, in  the  opening  they  afforded  for  the  inquiring  mind  to  range  freely 
over  the  field  of  argument  without  more  than  a  provisional  adherence  to  a 
thesis;  whereas  our  modes  of  Individual  authorship,  working  through  the 
press,  have  a  tendency  prematurely  to  wed  us  to  our  conclusions  before 
we  have  had  an  opportunity  of  weighing  the  objections  that  others  may 
oppose  to  them.  .  .  . 

"  The  question  how  far  endowments  for  education  are  to  be  desired  Is 


MINISTER    OF    FINANCE    UNDER    PALMERSTON.  3II 

beset  with  peculiar  difficulty.  Where  they  are  small  and  remote  from 
public  observation  they  tend  rapidly  to  torpor.  They  are  admirable  where 
they  come  in  aid  of  a  good  will  already  existing,  but  where  the  good  will 
does  not  exist  beforehand  they  are  as  likely  to  stifle  as  to  stimulate  its 
growth.  They  make  a  high  cultivation  accessible  to  the  youth  who  desires 
it  and  who  could  not  otherwise  attain  his  noble  and  worthy  end  ;  on  the 
other  hand,  they  remove  the  spur  by  which  Providence  neutralizes  the 
indolence  of  man  and  moves  him  to  supply  his  wants.  .  .  . 

"  And  now,  my  younger  friends,  you  to  whom  I  owe  the  distinction  of 
the  office  which  enables  and  requires  me  to  address  you,  if  I  have  dwelt 
thus  at  length  upon  the  character  and  scope  of  universities  and  their  place 
in  the  scheme  of  Christian  civilization  it  is  in  order  that,  setting  before  you 
the  dignity  that  belongs  to  them,  and  that  is  reflected  on  their  members, 
and  the  great  opportunities  which  they  offer  both  of  advancement  and 
improvement,  I  might  chiefly  suggest  and  Impress  by  facts,  which  may  be 
more  eloquent  than  precepts,  the  responsibilities  that  are  laid  upon  you  by 
the  enjoyment  of  these  gifts  and  blessings.  .  .  . 

"  Let  me  remind  you  how  Sir  Robert  Peel,  choosing  from  his 
quiver  with  a  congenial  forethought  that  shaft  which  was  most  likely  to 
strike  home,  averred  before  the  same  academic  audience  what  may  as  safely 
be  declared  to  you,  that  '  there  Is  a  presumption,  amounting  almost  to  cer- 
tainty, that  If  an)^  one  of  you  will  determine  to  be  eminent  in  whatever 
profession  you  may  choose,  and  will  act  with  unvarying  steadiness  In  pursu- 
ance of  that  determination,  you  will,  if  health  and  strength  be  given  you, 
infallibly  succeed.' 

"  The  mountain  tops  of  Scotland  behold  on  every  side  of  them  the 
witness  ;  and  many  a  one  of  what  were  once  her  morasses  and  moorlands, 
now  blossoming  as  the  rose,  carries  on  Its  face  the  proof  how  truly  it  is  in 
man,  and  not  In  his  circumstances,  that  the  secret  of  his  destiny  resides. 
For  most  of  you  that  destiny  will  take  its  final  bent  toward  evil  or  toward 
good,  not  from  the  Information  you  imbibe,  but  from  the  habits  of  mind, 
thought,  and  life  that  you  shall  acquire  during  your  academical  career. 
Could  you  with  the  bodily  eye  watch  the  moments  of  it  as  they  fly  you 
would  see  them  all  pass  by  you,  as  the  bee  that  has  rifled  the  heather  bears 
its  honey  through  the  air,  charged  with  the  promise,  or  It  may  be  with  the 
menace,  of  the  future.  In  many  things  it  is  wise  to  believe  before  expe- 
rience ;  to  believe  until  you  may  know  ;  and  believe  me  when  I  tell  you 
that  the  thrift  of  time  will  repay  you  In  after  life  with  a  usury  of  profit 
beyond  your  most  sanguine  dreams,  and  that  the  waste  of  it  will  make  you 
dwindle,  alike  in  Intellectual  and  in  moral  stature,  beneath  your  darkest 
reckonlnofs.  .  .  . 

"  I    would    not    confound    with    the    sordid    worship  of    popularity   in 


312  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

after  life  the  graceful  and  instinctive  love  of  praise  in  the  uncritical  period 
of  youth.  On  the  contrar)-,  I  say,  avail  yourselves  of  that  stimulus  to  good 
deeds;  and,  when  it  proceeds  from  worthy  sources  and  lights  upon  worthy 
conduct,  yield  yourselves  to  the  warm  satisfaction  it  inspires.  But  yet, 
even  while  young,  and  even  amidst  the  glow  of  that  delight,  keep  a  vigilant 
eye  upon  yourselves,  refer  the  honor  to  Him  from  whom  all  honor  comes, 
and  ever  be  inwardly  ashamed  for  not  being  worthier  of  his  gifts.  .  .  . 

"And,  gentlemen,  if  you  let  yourselves  enjoy  the  praise  of  your  teach- 
ers, let  me  beseech  you  to  repay  their  care  and  to  help  their  arduous  work 
by  entering  into  it  with  them,  and  by  showing  that  you  meet  their  exertions 
neither  with  a  churlish  mistrust  nor  with  a  passive  indifference,  but  with 
free  and  ready  gratitude.  Rely  upon  it,  they  require  your  sympathy,  and 
they  require  it  more  in  proportion  as  they  are  worthy  of  their  work.  The 
faithful  and  able  teacher,  says  an  old  adage,  is  in  loco  parentis.  His  charge 
certainly  resembles  the  mother's  care  in  this,  that,  if  he  be  devoted  to  his 
task,  you  can  measure  neither  the  cost  to  him  of  the  efforts  which  he  makes 
nor  the  debt  of  gratitude  you  owe  him.  The  great  poet  of  Italy,  the  pro- 
found and  lofty  Dante,  had  had  for  an  instructor  one  whom,  for  a  miserable 
vice,  his  poem  places  in  the  region  of  the  damned  ;  and  yet  this  lord  of 
song,  this  prophet  of  all  the  knowledge  of  his  time,  this  master  of  every 
gift  that  can  adorn  the  human  mind,  when  in  those  dreary  regions  he  sees 
the  known  imaofe  of  his  tutor,  avows  in  lancruao^e  of  a  mairnificence  all  his 
own  that  he  cannot,  even  now,  withhold  his  sympathy  and  sorrow  from  his 
unhappy  teacher,  for  he  recollects  how,  in  the  upper  world,  with  a  father's 
tender  care  that  teacher  had  pointed  to  him  the  way  by  which  man  becomes 
immortal. 

"  Gentlemen,  I  have  detained  you  long.  Perhaps  1  have  not  had  time 
to  be  brief;  certainly  I  could  have  wished  for  much  larger  opportunities 
of  maturing  and  verifying  what  I  have  addressed  to  you  upon  subjects 
which  have  always  possessed  a  hold  on  my  heart  and  have  long  had 
public  and  palpable  claims  on  my  attention.  Such  as  I  have  I  give.  And 
now,  finally,  in  bidding  you  farewell  let  me  invoke  every  blessing  upon  your 
venerable  university  in  its  new  career,  upon  the  youth  by  whom  its  halls  are 
gladdened,  and  upon  the  distinguished  head  and  able  teachers  by  whom  its 
places  of  authority  are  adorned." 


BUDGET    OF    1 86 1    AND    AMERICAN    COMPLICATIONS.  313 


CHAPTER  XVIII. 
Budget  of  1861  and  American  Complications. 

E  here  carry  the  line  of  the  hfe  of  VVilHam  E.  Gladstone  into 
the  great  years  of  the  seventh  decade.  This  period  was  .des- 
tined to  be  one  of  the  most  important  in  his  career.  It  was  to 
carry  him  far  in  several  directions  that  neither  he  nor  others 
might  well  foresee.  Indeed,  no  man  is  able  to  forecast  the 
future.  In  this  consists  the  weakness  of  history  as  a  science.  In  the  nat- 
ural sciences  we  know  with  approximate  exactitude  what  will  occur.  Know- 
ing the  conditions  we  are  able  to  foretell  the  results.  The  astronomer 
counts  his  eclipses  forward  and  backward  with  equal  facility.  The  chemist 
understands  the  exact  phenomena  that  will  follow  the  combination  of  certain 
elements,  and  he  knows  that  those  phenomena  will  under  the  same  condi- 
tions occur  in  the  year  4000  just  as  they  occur  at  the  present  year.  But  the 
statesman,  the  philosopher,  the  historian,  cannot  forecast.  They  can  inter- 
pret what  has  happened  in  the  vast  man-play  of  the  world.  They  can  ex- 
plain with  tolerable  certainty  the  existing  state ;  they  can  feel  the  draught 
and  tendency  in  the  direction  of  certain  events,  but  they  can  forecast 
nothing. 

The  seventh  decade  was  great  in  its  historical  movements.  Nearly  all 
the  nations  of  the  civilized  world  had  action,  power,  and  a  measure  of  trans- 
formation at  this  epoch.  In  France  it  was  the  heyday  of  the  Second  Em- 
pire. The  middle  of  the  period  referred  to  brought  the  Franco-Austrian 
War.  This  was  the  age  of  the  political  regeneration  of  Italy.  Garibaldi 
and  Victor  Emmanuel  fought  for  and  achieved  Italian  unity.  In  America 
we  know  too  well  the  heat  of  this  transforming  and  agitated  epoch.  Into 
it,  as  into  a  furnace,  was  cast  the  old  slaveholding  and  localized  America, 
and  out  of  It  arose  the  New  America,  with  freedom  for  all  men  and  a  Union 
energized  and  perfected  into  one.  In  England  there  were  also  great  events 
In  which  the  ministry  of  Lord  Palmerston,  remaining  In  power  until  1865, 
was  one  of  the  living,  potential  factors  ;  and  in  this  ministry  William  E. 
Gladstone  was  becoming — and  became — the  principal  figure. 

As  chancellor  of  the  exchequer  Mr.  Gladstone  had  now  to  vindicate 
and  perfect  the  policy  which  he  had  Initiated  in  the  year  i860.  Circum- 
stances were  somewhat  against  him.  Plenty  came  not  Englandward  to 
Invert  her  golden  horn.  The  crops  failed.  The  voice  of  the  evil  prophet 
was  heard  walling  like  Jeremiah  In  the  fields  and  markets.  Those  who  had 
opposed  the  change  from  the  old  Industrial  and  commercial  policy  to  the 
new  turned  up  their  eyes  and  charged  the  parsimony  of  nature  to  the  blun- 
der of  free  trade. 


314  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

Nevertheless,  things  went  not  ill  with  England  in  the  year  1861.  The 
results  of  the  new  commercial  treaty  with  France  were  such  as  to  meet  the 
most  sanguine  expectations  of  those  who  had  favored  and  promoted  that 
compact.  There  was  a  revival  of  trade.  Just  at  this  time  the  hardships 
that  came  in  the  wake  of  the  Crimean  War  ceased  to  be  felt.  The  liberation 
of  many  industries  from  the  duties  which  had  been  charged  on  the  products 
thereof  sent  all  manner  of  enterprise  forward  with  accelerated  strides.  So 
that  if  Mr.  Gladstone  at  the  head  of  the  financial  management  had  to  face 
the  parsimony  of  nature  shown  in  the  half  harvest  of  i860  he  might  also  be 
encouraged  with  the  cheerful  clang  of  industry  and  the  far-off  vision  of 
commerce. 

England  at  this  time  was  at  peace.  She  adopted  her  usual  policy  of 
neutrality  with  respect  to  the  Italian  war.  The  States  of  Europe  in  general 
held  aloof  from  that  complication  and  permitted  it  to  solve  itself  as  it 
would.  The  French  and  English  cooperated  in  a  military  movement 
against  the  Chinese,  and  that  movement,  whether  just  or  unjust,  was  highly 
successful  to  the  allies.  Peking,  as  all  the  world  knows,  was  occupied  by 
them,  and  a  new  treaty  was  extorted  from  the  head  of  the  Celestial  Empire. 
Meanwhile  the  secession  of  the  Southern  States  of  the  American  Union 
was  undertaken  and  carried  forward  with  a  zeal  and  rapidity  of  execution 
worthy  of  a  nobler  cause.  All  of  these  things  were  referred  to  in  her 
majesty's  address  at  the  opening  of  Parliament  in  1861. 

Scarcely  had  the  session  begun  when  a  question  arose  that  was  des- 
tined to  extend  far  and  to  demand  great  changes  in  its  solution.  There 
appeared  a  disposition  in  England  to  abolish  the  rates  for  the  support  of 
the  Church.  The  religious  condition  of  the  United  Kingdom  was  of  a 
character  to  bring  the  frequent  revival  of  this  issue,  and  we  may  say  once 
for  all  that  the  end  of  it  is  not  yet.  Of  course  general  society  will  not  ulti- 
mately permit  itself  to  be  taxed  for  the  support  of  any  denominational 
organization. 

The  reader  will  remember  that  early  in  Gladstone's  career  he  had 
sought  to  get  a  logical  basis  on  which  to  build  up  and  justify  the  theory  of 
State  taxation  for  the  support  of  the  Established  Church.  In  search  for  an 
argument  which  would  satisfy  his  own  mind  he  went  back  and  back,  finding 
none  until  he  came  to  the  assumption  that  religion  and  the  maintenance  of 
religion  are  proper  and  essential  functions  of  the  State.  On  this  thesis  he 
produced  his  work  on  The  State  in  its  Relations  with  the  Church,  and  on 
this  thesis  Macaulay  proceeded  to  bray  that  book  in  the  mortar  of  criticism. 
From  that  contention  unto  the  present  day  the  battle  has  gone  more 
and  more  against  the  advocates  of  any  kind  of  State  support  for  religious 
organizations. 

At  the  time  of  which  we  speak  a  bill  was  introduced  into  the  House  of 


BUDGET    OF     1 86 1     AND    AMERICAN    COMPLICATIONS.  315 

Commons  by  Sir  John  Trelawny  for  the  total  aboHtion  of  Church  rates. 
An  odd  and  ahnost  inexphcable  condition  of  sentiment  existed  in  different 
parts  of  England  on  this  subject.  There  was  a  provision  of  the  statute 
already  that  the  Dissenters,  who  were  a  majority  in  some  of  the  parishes, 
might  be  exempt  on  their  own  vote  from  the  Church  tax.  Experience  had 
shown,  however,  that  the  pride  of  such  religionists  as  Englishmen  generally 
forbade  them  to  avail  themselves  of  the  law  and  escape  taxation  for  the 
support  of  the  English  Church.  There  was  another  reason  also,  and  that 
was  that  the  poorer  classes  had  few  religious  opportunities  or  none  save 
those  which  were  furnished  by  the  Church  establishment.  To  support  it, 
therefore,  seemed  an  expedient  thing  to  many  Dissenters. 

Mr.  Gladstone  made  a  speech  in  February,  1861,  on  Sir  John  Trelawny's 
resolution.  He  said  that  the  people  of  England  desired  to  maintain  the 
union  of  Church  and  State,  and  that  that  union  could  hardly  be  supported 
without  the  Church  rates.  It  was  evident  that  in  the  country  districts  of 
England  the  abolition  of  the  rates  would  signify  the  abolition,  or  at  least 
the  abandonment,  of  the  Church,  and  for  that  England  was  not  prepared. 
He  hoped  that  some  compromise  measure  might  be  adopted  combining  the 
voluntary  principle  with  the  legal  requirement — such  as  the  privilege  con- 
ceded to  each  parish  to  tax  itself  by  a  majority  vote.  Moreover,  it  was 
hardly  worth  while  to  agitate  a  question  of  this  kind  in  the  House  of 
Commons,  for  the  reason  that  whatever  action  might  be  taken  by  that  body 
the  House  of  Lords  would  certainly  support  the  existing  order  against 
innovation  and  change. 

The  event  showed  that  on  this  subject  there  was  a  division  of  senti- 
ment, not  very  emphatic,  of  course,  between  Mr.  Gladstone  and  all  the  other 
members  of  the  Palmerston  cabinet.  They  favored  an  amendment  which 
had  been  offered,  postponing  the  consideration  of  the  subject  for  six  months. 
He  thought  that  the  question  might  as  well  be  met  and  solved  at  once,  with 
a  decision  in  the  negative  as  to  the  Trelawny  Bill.  On  this  issue  he  was 
defeated  by  the  majority  of  the  House,  supported  by  all  the  members  of 
the  government  except  himself 

A  very  important  measure  of  this  session  was  the  establishment  of  a 
system  of  post-office  savings  banks.  It  had  become  notorious  that  the 
accommodations  in  England  for  small  depositors  were  altogether  inadequate. 
Statistics  showed  that  there  were  in  Enofland  and  Wales  no  more  than  six 
hundred  savings  banks  of  a  kind  to  accommodate  the  humbler  people. 
These  were  open  to  depositors  only  for  a  few  hours  twice  a  week. 
The  project  was  conceived  of  making  nearly  three  thousand  post  offices  in 
the  kingdom  depositories  for  small  savings.  Mr.  Gladstone  took  up  this 
cause  with  his  usual  ability  and  introduced  a  bill  known  as  the  Post-office 
Savinors  Bank  Bill.    The  manag^ement  of  the  concern  was  to  be  criven  to  the 


3l6  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E,    GLADSTONE. 

postmaster-general,  who  was  to  be  assisted  by  a  body  of  commissioners. 
The  postal  depositories  were  to  be  kept  open  every  day  in  the  week  except 
Sunday  for  ten  hours  a  day.  The  government  was  to  pay  the  depositors 
two  and  a  half  per  cent  on  their  deposits.  It  was  believed  that  the  system 
would  support  itself  and  perhaps  yield  a  revenue  ;  but  in  case  it  should  not 
do  so  the  chancellor  of  the  exchequer  provided  in  his  bill  that  any  deficiency 
arising  from  this  postal  bank  system  should  be  met  out  of  what  was  called 
the  Consolidated  Fund.  The  measure  soon  went  into  operation  and  proved 
to  be  one  of  the  most  salutary  economies  that  had  ever  been  invented. 
While  Mr.  Gladstone  could  not  claim  to  be  the  originator  of  the  system,  to 
him  might  nevertheless  be  assigned  the  place  of  its  principal  author  and 
promoter. 

Parliament  in  1861  was  seriously  agitated  by  the  condition  of  affairs  in 
Italy.  In  that  country  a  revolution  was  on  in  the  full  sense  of  the  term. 
Francis  II,  King  of  the  Two  Sicilies,  inert,  reactionary,  oppressive,  had  been 
driven  from  his  dominions  in  the  previous  year.  The  patriots  under  the 
lead  of  Garibaldi  were  successful  in  their  insurrection,  and  \'ictor  Emmanuel 
was  proceeding  on  the  basis  of  the  revolution  to  create  a  united  Itah'.  His 
ambitions  extended  to  and  included  the  State  of  \'enice.  In  England  there 
was  great  diversity  of  opinion  as  to  whether  the  government  should  put 
itself  in  active  sympathy  with  the  revolutionary  party  or  whether  it  should 
stand  in  favor  with  the  past  by  supporting  Francis  II  and  the  Pope  of  Rome. 

It  was  claimed  that  the  policy  of  the  British  government  had  been  too 
active  in  favor  of  the  national  cause  in  Italy.  This  sentiment  was  voiced  by 
a  resolution  introduced  into  the  Commons  on  the  4th  of  March,  1861,  b)' 
Mr.  Pope  Hennessy.  In  support  of  his  resolution  Mr.  Hennessy  attacked 
the  government,  praised  the  old  order  in  Italy,  and  condemned  the  new. 
Hereupon  a  hot  debate  ensued.  Mr.  Layard  replied  to  Hennessy  in  good 
set  terms.  He  declared  that  the  government  was  in  accord  with  the  senti- 
ments of  the  English  people.  For  himself  the  cause  of  United  Italy  was 
his  cause,  in  sympathy  and  hope.  He  was  followed,  however,  by  Sir  George 
Bowyer,  who  renewed  the  attack  on  the  governmental  policy  and  attempted 
to  show  that  that  policy  was  only  a  continuation  of  the  well-known  purpose 
and  predilection  of  Lord  Palmerston  for  the  Emperor  of  the  French.  In 
pursuance  of  that  policy  the  government  had  come  to  shame  and  grief,  and 
the  European  friends  and  allies  of  Great  Britain  had  suffered  much.  The 
British  flag  was  no  longer  the  emblem  of  justice  and  honor  throughout  the 
earth.  The  friends  of  England  had  come  to  look  upon  her  with  distrust 
and  dread.  None  now  did  her  honor.  None  now  followed  her  lead  except 
the  revolutionary  party  on  the  Continent,  and  that  party  was  engaged  only 
in  overthrowing  legitimate  sovereigns  and  making  a  ruin  of  the  peace  of 
peoples. 


BUDGET    OF     1 86 1     AND    AMERICAN    COMPLICATIONS.  317 

To  all  this  Mr.  Gladstone  spoke  in  answer  with  unusual  cogency.  He 
said  that  it  was  the  excess  of  the  debate  which  induced  him  to  say  anything. 
So  far  as  Francis  of  Sardinia  was  concerned  animadversions  on  that  per- 
sonage might  pass.  Nor  would  he  undertake  an  apology  or  defense  of  the 
British  foreign  minister;  but  when  the  criticisms  of  speakers  extended 
unjustly  to  the  policy  of  the  government  of  Great  Britain  he  would  reply. 
Her  majesty's  government  was  in  thorough  accord  with  the  English  people, 
and  they  in  accord  with  the  government.  It  was  charged  that  the  foreign 
policy  of  England  was  unjust  and  dishonorable,  also  that  her  majesty's 
government  was  supporting  an  unjust  cause  in  Italy.  It  had  been  said  that 
the  rising  of  the  Neapolitans  and  Italians  was  a  conspiracy  of  wickedness, 
headed  by  a  crafty  minister  and  an  unscrupulous  king.  The  constitutional 
administration  and  laws  of  Naples  had  been  commended  by  the  honorable 
gentleman  who  had  preceded  him.  If  the  Constitution  of  Naples  had  any 
worth  in  it  that  worth  was  trodden  in  the  mire  by  the  King  of  the  Two 
Sicilies  and  his  party.  Francis  II,  as  well  as  his  predecessor,  Ferdinand  II, 
had  shamelessly  overridden  the  Constitution  and  the  laws,  and  had  brought 
untold  sufferings  on  the  people.  We  had  lived  to  hear  Francis  II  praised 
in  the  British  House  of  Commons  !  It  had  been  averred  that  he  was  a 
courageous  king.  That  might  be  true  ;  but  the  courage  required  by  the 
king  and  shown  by  him,  as  was  said,  in  the  casemates,  where  he  was  protected 
from  the  shells,  at  the  siege  of  Gaeta,  was,  according  to  his  (Mr.  Glad- 
stone's) opinion,  nothing  in  comparison  with  the  courage  of  honorable  gen- 
tlemen who,  in  the  British  Commons,  the  great  arena  of  freedom,  had  the 
audacity  to  uphold  the  Neapolitan  despotism. 

This  flight  was  said  by  those  who  heard  it  to  have  thrown  the  House 
into  such  an  uproar  of  applause  that  the  speaker  was  unable  for  several 
minutes  to  proceed.  He  then  went  on  to  review  the  character  of  the  papal 
o-overnment  in  the  States  of  the  Church.  He  called  attention  to  the  out- 
rages  and  crimes  which  had  been  committed,  if  not  under  the  sanction,  at 
least  under  the  toleration  of  that  government.  He  was  prepared  with  doc- 
uments and  indisputable  proofs  to  show  that  in  Perugia  and  Modena  crimes 
all  the  way  from  base  favoritism  to  legal  murders  had  been  committed.  As 
to  the  general  movement  for  a  United  Italy,  it  was  not  so  much  the 
praiseworthy  sympathy  of  Great  Britain  and  France,  not  so  much  the  pop- 
ular revolt  headed  by  Garibaldi,  not  so  much  the  triumphant  leadership  of 
Victor  Emmanuel,  as  it  was  the  abuses  and  maladministration  of  Austria  in 
Italy  that  had  done  the  work. 

As  to  the  character  of  the  Italian  revolution  the  speaker  was  ready  to 
justify  it  in  all  its  stages.  He  declared  that  never  before  had  changes  so 
great  and  important  been  effected  with  so  little  to  raise  a  blush  on  the 
cheeks  of  those  who  promoted  them.    "  They  recall  to  my  mind,"  said  he,  "  the 


3i8 


LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 


words  with  which  Mr.  Fox  greeted  the  first  appearance  of  the  French  Revo- 
hition  when  he  said  that  it  was  the  most  stupendous  fabric  that  had  ever 
been  erected  on  the  basis  of  human  integrity  in  any  age  or  country  of  the 
world.  Sadly  indeed  was  that  prophecy  falsified  by  subsequent  events  from 
causes  which  were  not  then  suspected ;  but  I  believe  the  words  were  not  far 


VICTOR   EMMANUEL,    KING  OF   ITALY, 


from  the  truth  at  the  time  when  they  were  spoken,  and  whether  they  were 
or  not  they  are  the  simple  and  solid  truth  in  their  application  to  Italy. 
For  long  years  have  we  been  compelled  to  reckon  Italy  in  its  divided  state 
— Italy  under  the  friends  of  the  Austrians,  Italy  the  victim  of  legitimacy, 
Italy  with  a  spiritual  sovereignty  as  its  center — to  reckon  it  as  one  of  the 
chief  sources  of  difficulty  and  disturbance  in  European  politics.  \\  e  are 
now  coming  to  another  time.  The  miseries  of  Italy  have  been  the  danger 
of  Europe.     The  consolidation  of  Italy — her  restoration  to  national  life  (if 


BUDGET    OF    1861    AND    AMERICAN    COMPLICATIONS.  3I9 

it  be  the  will  of"  God  to  grant  her  that  boon) — will  be,  I  believe,  a  blessing 
as  great  to  Europe  as  it  is  to  all  the  people  of  the  peninsula.  It  will  add 
to  the  general  peace  and  welfare  of  the  civilized  world  a  new  and  solid 
guarantee." 

The  effect  of  this  speech  was  so  overwhelming  that  the  mover  and  sup- 
porters of  the  resolution  before  the  House  did  not  press  it  to  a  vote.  Other 
speakers  followed,  most  of  them  in  support  of  the  governmental  policy. 
Lord  John  Russell,  the  secretary  for  foreign  affairs,  against  whom  most  of 
the  animadversions  had  been  directed,  replied  in  conclusion,  vindicating  his 
policy,  showing  that  it  was  a  truly  English  policy,  and  that  the  country 
was  in  accord  therewith.  Later  in  this  session  of  Parliament  the  question 
reappeared,  and  Mr.  Gladstone  made  another  short  speech  on  the  subject. 
He  repelled  the  charge  that  Great  Britain,  through  her  ministry,  had 
fomented  the  Italian  insurrections.  He  repeated  his  charges  as  to  the  des- 
potism and  criminality  of  the  administration  in  Perugia  and  Modena,  and 
was  able  to  fortify  his  assertions  with  indisputable  proofs. 

Mr.  Gladstone  did  not  bring  forward  his  budget  at  this  session  until 
the  15th  of  April.  The  same  interest  was  manifested  on  the  occasion  as 
hitherto,  and  the  interest  was  not  disappointed.  The  chancellor  of  the 
exchequer  entered  a  full  House,  of  which  he  commanded  the  confidence. 
Besides,  there  was  a  great  throng  of  visitors  drawn  to  his  audience  in  expec- 
tation of  a  master  effort.  He  came  to  his  task  with  the  same  confidence 
and  pleasing  manner  which  the  public  had  come  to  anticipate.  There  was 
thought  to  be  a  touch  of  natural  pride  in  his  demeanor,  but  no  undue  mani- 
festation of  self-consciousness. 

On  this  occasion  the  chancellor  of  the  exchequer  began  by  a  reference 
to  a  saying  in  Schiller's  Mary  Stuart,  that  if  she  had  been  in  her  time  much 
hated  she  had  also  been  much  beloved.  He  applied  this  saying  to  the 
financial  legislation  of  the  year  i860.  That  also  had  been  much  hated  and 
much  beloved.  He  acknowledged  that  the  policy  which  he  had  introduced 
had  been  displeasing  to  many  people  ;  but  that  policy  had  gained  the  con- 
fidence of  the  country  more  and  more.  He  begged  to  revert  once  more  to 
the  commercial  treaty  with  France,  and  to  call  attention  of  the  House  to 
what  that  treaty  involved.  It  involved  the  completion  and  perfection  of  the 
policy  of  free  trade,  extending  that  policy  from  Great  Britain  to  her  neigh- 
bors. The  protective  tariffs  to  which  the  people  of  Great  Britain  had  been 
subjected  had  been  removed.  Nature  during  the  last  year  had  not  been 
auspicious  to  England.  The  expenditures  of  the  nation  had  been  the  largest 
that  ever  came  in  time  of  peace.  The  aggregate  was  more  than  seventy- 
three  and  a  half  million  pounds;  but  he  was  able  to  report  a  balance  in  the 
treasury  of  eight  hundred  and  twenty-two  thousand  pounds.  He  then 
reviewed    the    balances   in    a   comparative  way  for  several   preceding  years. 


320  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

He  presented  the  usual  detailed  statements  of  revenue,  including  the  arti- 
cles on  which  the  duties  had  been  abolished,  and  showing  how  much  loss 
had  arisen  from  the  changed  policy  of  the  government.  In  nearly  every 
case  the  losses  on  the  various  articles  had  been  much  less  than  the  estimates 
which  he  had  presented  to  the  House  in  i860.  As  to  the  excises,  he  must 
allow  that  there  had  been  a  deficiency  in  the  aggregate  duties  on  hops,  malt, 
and  distilled  spirits  of  about  a  million  and  a  half  pounds.  The  speaker 
next  gave  the  statistics  of  expenditure  as  far  back  as  1853,  showing  how  the 
same  had  increased,  the  reasons  of  the  increase,  and  the  causes  of  occa- 
sional deficiencies. 

The  chancellor  of  the  exchequer  once  more  took  up  the  question  of 
the  French  treaty.  He  showed  the  perfect  concord  of  that  agreement  and 
the  legislation  of  Great  Britain.  He  praised  the  French  government  for 
its  "loyal,  thorough,  intelligent,  unfiinching  determination"  to  carry  out  the 
new  policy.  That  policy  had  greatly  improved  the  export  trade  of  both 
countries.  In  Great  Britain  the  exports  had  been  increased  by  at  least  six 
million  puunds  in  a  single  year.  Imports  had  also  increased,  particularly 
in  the  lines  of  those  commodities  from  which  the  duties  had  been  removed. 
The  importation  of  grains  had  been  more  than  doubled.  The  country 
instead  of  suffering  from  this  had  been  greatly  benefited. 

For  the  ensuing  year  Mr.  Gladstone  estimated  the  expenditure  at 
sixty-nine  million  nine  hundred  thousand  pounds  ;  the  revenue  at  seventy- 
one  million  eight  hundred  and  twenty-three  thousand  pounds.  It  was  not 
the  disposition  of  the  government  to  accumulate  a  surplus,  but  to  reduce 
the  rates  of  taxation.  This  might  be  safely  done.  He  would  recommend 
the  remission  of  the  tenth  penny  of  the  income  tax  ;  also  the  duties  on  tea 
and  sugar,  and  the  remaining  duty  on  paper.  He  hoped  that  though  he 
might  not  himself  be  able  to  accomplish  everything  in  this  direction  that  he 
aspired  to  do  yet  some  future  chancellor  of  the  exchequer  would  accom- 
plish this  result,  and  by  so  doing  would  build  himself  an  everlasting  fame. 
He  said  that  the  remission  of  the  penny  in  the  income  tax  would  reduce  the 
revenue  by  eight  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  pounds.  The  proposed  remis- 
sion of  the  paper  duty  would  amount  to  six  hundred  and  sixty-five  thousand 
pounds ;  but  the  aggregate  of  the  two  great  reductions  would  still  leave  in 
the  treasury  a  surplus  of  nearly  half  a  million. 

Counting  safely  on  this  surplus,  the  government  might  remit  other 
minor  burdens  that  commerce  and  industry  were  still  bearing  here  and  there. 
The  treasury  would  soon  be  replenished  with  the  Chinese  indemnity,  which 
would  goto  the  credit  of  the  revenues,  and  at  the  same  time  the  expenses  of 
the  military  establishment  would  be  materially  reduced  by  the  withdrawal 
of  the  army  from  eastern  Asia.  As  to  the  income  tax,  the  tea  tax,  and  the 
sugar  tax,  he  would   retain  them  one  year.     He  congratulated  the   House 


BUDGET    OF    1 86 1     AND    AMERICAN    COMPLICATIONS.  321 

that  Great  Britain  was  about  to  escape  finally  from  the  burdens  of  taxation 
she  had  borne  so  long.  The  country  was  no  longer  at  war.  True,  there  had 
been  a  season  of  blight  such  as  hardly  any  living  man  could  recollect ;  "  yet," 
said  he,  "  on  looking  abroad  over  the  face  of  England  no  one  is  sensible  of 
any  signs  of  decay,  least  of  all  can  such  an  apprehension  be  felt  with  regard 
to  those  attributes  which  are  perhaps  the  highest  of  all,  and  on  which  most 
of  all  depends  our  national  existence — the  spirit  and  courage  of  the  country. 
It  is  needless  to  say  that  neither  the  sovereign  on  the  throne,  nor  the 
nobles  and  the  gentry  that  fill  the  place  of  the  gallant  chieftains  of  the 
Middle  Age,  nor  the  citizens  who  represent  the  invincible  soldiery  of  Crom- 
well, nor  the  peasantry  who  are  the  children  of  those  sturdy  archers  that 
drew  the  crossbows  of  Eneland  in  the  fields  of  France — none  of  these 
betray  either  inclination  or  tendency  to  depart  from  the  tradition  of  their 
forefathers.  If  there  be  any  danger  which  has  recently  in  an  especial  man- 
ner beset  us,  I  confess  that,  though  it  may  be  owing  to  some  peculiarity  in 
my  position,  or  some  weakness  in  my  vision,  it  has  seemed  to  me  to  be 
during  recent  years  chiefly  in  our  proneness  to  constant,  and  apparently 
almost  boundless,  augmentations  of  expenditure  and  in  the  consequences 
that  are  associated  with  them. " 

We  have  remarked  on  the  splendid  bearing  of  Mr.  Gladstone  on  the 
occasion  of  his  formal  appearances  before  the  Commons.  No  other  finance 
minister  has  ever  had  so  great  success  in  the  presentation  of  his  budgets 
and  in  the  explication  of  them  before  an  audience,  the  applause  of  one  half 
of  whom  was  well  calculated  to  betray  him  to  the  hungry  watchfulness  of 
the  other  half  It  has  been  claimed  that  his  manner  in  presenting  the 
budget  of  1 86 1  was  the  acme  of  his  achievement  in  this  role  of  statesmanship. 
Never  once  on  such  occasions  did  he  lose  his  balance  ;  never  once  surren- 
der his  self-control.  His  ability  to  combine  statistics  with  the  pleasantries 
of  familiar  oratory  and  to  make  that  the  basis  and  concrete  of  a  really 
splendid  structure  was,  without  doubt,  greater  than  that  of  any  other  states- 
man of  his  century. 

On  the  occasion  just  described  Mr.  Gladstone  concluded  thus :  "  The 
spirit  of  the  people  is  excellent.  There  never  was  a  nation  in  the  whole 
history  of  the  world  more  willing  to  bear  the  heavy  burdens  under  which 
it  lies,  more  generously  disposed  to  overlook  the  errors  of  those  who  have 
the  direction  of  its  affairs.  For  my  own  part  I  hold  that  if  this  country 
can  steadily  and  constantly  remain  as  wise  in  the  use  of  her  treasure  as 
she  is  unrivaled  in  its  production,  and  as  moderate  in  the  exercise  of  her 
strength  as  she  is  rich  in  its  possession,  then  we  may  well  cherish  the  hope 
that  there  is  yet  reserved  for  England  a  great  work  to  do  on  her  own  part 
and  on  the  part  of  others,  and  that  for  many  a  generation  yet  to  come  she 
will  continue  to  hold  a  foremost  place  among  the  nations  of  the  world." 


322  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

If  the  government  of  Lord  Palmerston  was  now  consolidated,  if  it  was 
supported,  as  it  was,  by  a  majority  of  about  fifty  in  the  House  of  Commons, 
it  was  nevertheless  confronted  by  a  well-organized  opposition,  numbering 
much  more  than  two  hundred  members.  The  belligerency  of  the  English 
nature  asserts  itself  powerfully  in  Parliament.  Nothing  goes  unchallenged. 
There  is  nearly  always  an  opportunity  for  an  aspiring  orator  to  make  of 
himself  the  hero  (or  the  fool)  of  the  hour.  The  presentation  of  a  budget 
almost  invariably  brings  out  a  display  of  this  kind.  Not  only  is  the  leader 
of  the  opposition  expected  to  say  something  in  criticism  of  the  plans  pre- 
sented, but  other  members  also  may  have  their  say. 

On  the  occasion  just  described  an  angry  attack  was  made  on  the  chan- 
cellor of  the  exchequer  by  the  honorable  Mr.  Bentinck,  who  declared  that 
the  measures  proposed  were  but  a  continuation  of  the  lifelong  policy  of 
Mr.  Gladstone  against  the  interests  of  agriculture  in  Great  Britain.  It  was 
a  policy  that  might  do  well  enough  for  trade,  but  Great  Britain  was  a 
country,  and  not  a  shop.  The  budget  was  planned  with  a  cold-blooded 
indifference  to  the  producing  interests  of  British  farmers  and  landlords. 
In  the  same  strain  spoke  Lord  Robert  Montagu,  also  a  representative  of 
the  landed  interest.  It  could  but  be  that  the  country  squires  of  England 
should  imagine  themselves  mortally  hurt,  or  at  least  mortally  insulted,  with 
the  new  scheme  of  political  economy  which  confirmed  in  toto  the  policy 
of  Sir  Robert  Peel,  virtually  leaving  all  industries,  all  trades,  and  all  con- 
cerns in  the  realm  on  the  basis  oi  laissez  faire. 

To  these  attacks  Mr.  Gladstone  made  small  allusion  in  his  reply.  To 
those  criticisms,  however,  which  were  directed  to  his  pet  measure  of  the 
abolition  of  the  duty  on  paper  he  spoke  fully  in  answer.  Of  those  who 
appeared  as  the  champions  of  the  paper  interest  Mr.  Francis  Thornhill 
Baring  was  the  ablest  and  most  influential.  He  argued  strongly  that 
unless  there  was  to  be  a  corresponding  reduction  of  expenditures  the  House 
ought  to  refuse  to  enact  the  abolition  of  the  paper  duty.  In  the  same  strain 
spoke  Sir  Stafford  Henry  Northcote,  who  also  commanded  a  following, 
and  who  in  the  next  year  amplified  his  views  in  a  work  called  Twenty  Years 
of  Financial  Policy. 

To  the  criticisms  of  these  distinguished  speakers  Mr.  Gladstone  replied, 
demonstrating  that  the  surplus  which  he  had  shown  in  the  figures  of  his 
estimates  was  actual.  He  again  went  over  the  items  of  his  table,  and 
showed  that  the  expectation  which  he  had  deduced  therefrom  was  not  only 
arithmetical  and  logical,  but  as  much  of  a  verity  as  anything  could  be 
which  had  in  it  a  future  contingency.  He  again  traversed  certain  argu- 
ments which  had  been  adhered  to  since  the  beginning  of  the  agitation  in 
favor  of  free  trade.  Finally  he  challenged  the  opposition,  should  there  be 
a  disposition  to  do  so,  to  come  to  the  direct  test  of  a  vote,  or  otherwise 


BUDGET    OF     1861     AND    AMERICAN    COMPLICATIONS.  323 

allow  that  the  debate  was  only  a  dallying  expedient,  wasting  the  time  of 
the  House  of  Commons. 

As  for  Mr.  Disraeli,  on  this  occasion,  he  was  as  cautious  and  adroit  as 
usual.  He  did  not  directly  attack  the  budget  or  challenge  its  merit  by 
calling  for  a  division  of  the  House.  He  proposed,  however,  in  a  mild  criti- 
cism, that  any  abolition  of  the  indirect  tax  should  not  touch  the  existing 
duty  on  tea.  But  he  was  unable  to  prevail  even  in  this  small  effort  at  a 
diversion,  and  the  part  of  the  budget  calling  for  the  continuance  of  the 
income  tax  was  voted  without  a  call  of  the  House.  Mr.  Gladstone  then 
went  forward  to  demand  that  the  tea  tax  and  sugar  tax,  which  he  declared 
had  been  misnamed  war  taxes,  should  be  extended  for  another  fiscal  year. 
He  argued  the  point  that  the  system  of  protection  had  already  fallen  before 
the  advanced  legislation  of  the  period,  and  that  it  was  now  simply  a  ques- 
tion of  temporary  expediency  in  what  manner  the  taxes  referred  to  should 
be  dealt  with.  As  to  an  amendment  which  was  before  the  House  for  the 
reduction  of  the  tea  duty  to  a  shilling  a  pound,  that  could  not  be  accepted, 
as  it  would  destroy  the  very  surplus  which  he  had  been  able  to  show  as  the 
expected  result  of  his  scheme  for  the  ensuing  year.  He  held  that  the 
argument  he  was  now  presenting  was  entirely  consistent  with  the  policy 
which  he  had  long  advocated  and  harmonized  even  with  the  views  of  that 
prince  of  free  traders.  Sir  Robert  Peel.  As  between  the  retention  of  the 
tea  tax  and  the  abolition  of  the  paper  duty  the  former  would  stimulate 
foreign  enterprise,  while  the  latter  would  give  an  impetus  to  the  home  indus- 
tries of  Great  Britain.  After  further  debate  the  plan  of  the  chancellor  of 
the  exchequer  was  adopted  without  amendment. 

Mr.  Gladstone  in  the  management  of  his  budget  of  1861  adopted  a  new 
plan  of  procedure.  Instead  of  offering  as  many  bills  as  there  were  provi- 
sions to  be  covered  in  the  budget,  he  prepared  ojie  bill  only  for  the  whole. 
He  was  moved  to  this  course,  no  doubt,  by  the  spirit  which  had  been  shown 
just  previously  in  the  House  of  Lords  relative  to  the  paper  duty.  The 
Lords  had  been  able  in  that  instance  to  neorative  a  single  clause  of  the 
budget  without  objection  to  other  parts.  Gladstone  plainly  intended  by  his 
new  method  to  force  the  upper  House  to  accept  or  reject  the  budget  as  a 
whole. 

This  method,  however,  was  also  a  restriction  on  the  House  of  Com- 
mons. That  body,  as  well  as  the  upper  House,  was  brought  to  the  alterna- 
tive of  accepting  or  rejecting  the  whole,  under  the  provision  of  a  single  bill. 
The  opposition  was  greatly  excited  over  this  turn  in  the  ministerial  policy. 
It  was  claimed  that  that  policy  was  against  the  Constitution  of  Great 
Britain.  It  was  a  movement  on  the  part  of  the  House,  said  the  opposition 
orators,  to  destroy  one  of  the  prerogatives  of  the  House  of  Lords.  Several 
violent  speeches  were  made,  the  most  inopportune  of  all  being  that  of  Lord 


324  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

Robert  Cecil,  destined  after  more  than  thirty  years,  under  his  title  of  the 
Marquis  of  Salisbury,  to  be  Gladstone's  successor  in  the  office  of  prime 
minister. 

On  the  occasion  referred  to  Lord  Cecil  charged  the  chancellor  of  the 
exchequer  with  having  brought  before  the  House  of  Commons  a  merely 
"  personal  budget,"  for  which  and  for  the  promises  of  which  there  was  no 
other  pledge  than  the  honorable  gentleman's  word.  For  his  part  he  thought 
the  budget  such  a  document  as  might  have  emanated  from  the  office  of  a 
county  attorney.  Aye,  more  than  that,  he  was  constrained  to  say  that  it 
would  be  an  injustice  to  the  county  attorneys  to  suppose  them  capable  of 
producing  such  a  document  !  So  the  harangue  continued  until  the  House 
was  in  the  act  of  calling  Sir  Robert  down. 

Episodes  of  this  kind  rarely  affected  Mr.  Gladstone's  temper.  His 
almost  unvarying  policy  was  to  pass  by  personal  attacks  and  to  confine  his 
speech  to  real  issues,  whether  coming  from  his  own  side  or  from  the  opposi- 
tion. In  the  further  discussion  of  the  question  he  averred  that  his  plan  of 
covering  the  whole  budget  with  a  single  bill  was  not  without  great  and  fre- 
quent precedents  in  the  past  usage  of  the  House  of  Commons.  He  defied 
his  critics  to  point  to  any  constitutional  provision  that  was  violated  by  his 
method.  More  than  this,  the  plan  which  he  had  proposed,  of  adopting  or 
rejecting  as  a  whole,  was  more  accordant  with  the  real  Constitution  of  Great 
Britain — that  ancient  Constitution  which  had  its  roots  deep  down  in  Anglo- 
Saxon  England — than  was  the  more  recent  usage  of  dividing  a  proposition 
into  many  parts.  In  so  far  as  the  proposition  referred  to  affected  the  House 
of  Lords  he  was  willing  to  defend  that  also  as  consistent  with  the  Constitu- 
tion.  "  I  think  that  Constitution,"  said  he,  "  will  be  all  the  better  for  the 
operation.  As  to  the  Constitution  laid  down  by  my  right  honorable  friend, 
under  which  there  is  to  be  a  division  of  function  and  office  between  the 
House  of  Commons  and  the  House  of  Lords — with  regard  to  fixing  the 
income  and  charge  of  the  country  from  year  to  year,  both  of  them  being 
equally  responsible  for  it,  which  means  that  neither  would  be  responsible — 
as  far  as  that  Constitution  is  concerned,  I  cannot  help  saying  that  in  my 
humble  opinion  the  sooner  it  receives  a  mortal  stab  the  better." 

Meanwhile  the  veto  of  the  abolition  of  the  paper  duty  by  the  House  of 
Lords,  as  hitherto  narrated,  came  back  for  consideration  in  the  Commons. 
Along  this  line  of  contention  the  opposition  made  its  strongest  rally.  There 
was  a  fear  that  the  attitude  of  the  Lords  would  be  so  strongly  supported  in 
the  lower  House  as  to  prevail.  The  principal  speakers  who  appeared  in 
the  arena  at  this  juncture  were  Lord  Palmerston,  Lord  John  Russell,  Mr 
Disraeli,  Mr.  Cobden,  and  Mr.  Baring.  The  onus  of  the  defense  of  the  bill 
for  the  abolition  of  the  duty  rested  most  of  all  on  Mr.  Gladstone.  He  found 
occasion   in   the   speech  which  he   now  made  to   support  the  authority  of 


BUDGET    OF     1861    AND    AMERICAN    COMPLICATIONS.  325 

Cobden  against  that  of  Baring.  No  one  could  doubt,  said  he,  that  Mr.  Cob- 
den  was  the  best  informed  and  most  influential  of  those  statesmen  who  had 
conduced  to  the  present  advanced  commercial  and  industrial  condition  of 
Great  Britain.  That  gentleman  was  therefore  an  authority  whose  advice 
the  House  of  Commons  oueht  to  heed. 

The  repeal  of  the  duty  on  paper,  said  the  speaker,  had  come  in  the 
course  of  events.  It  was  really  a  popular  measure.  The  people  of  Eng- 
land had  come  to  understand  that  the  removal  of  such  duties  as  that  under 
consideration  was  in  their  interest.  The  opposition  had  taunted  him  with 
having  become  the  champion  of  a  system  that  had  originated  with  the  ultra 
radicals  of  the  Manchester  school.  This  the  speaker  denied.  While  he 
was  in  accord  with  Mr.  John  Bright  in  many  of  his  principles  and  policies 
he  did  not  fully  agree  with  that  gentleman's  opinions.  As  to  the  doctrine 
of  free  trade — its  general  benefits  as  a  commercial  principle — his  views  and 
those  of  Mr.  Bright  harmonized.  He  did  not  doubt  that  the  House  would 
support  him  in  the  position  which  he  now  occupied,  and  thus  complete  vic- 
toriously the  last  act  in  the  drama  by  which  Great  Britain  was  attaining  her 
commercial  freedom. 

The  result  proved  it  even  so.  The  House  voted  with  the  chancellor  of 
the  exchequer,  though  the  opposition  succeeded  in  reducing  the  ministerial 
majority  to  fifteen.  The  bill,  including  the  abolition  of  the  duty  on  paper, 
was  sent  to  the  House  of  Lords,  where  it  again  encountered  serious  opposi- 
tion. It  was  not  now  the  Earl  of  Derby,  however,  who  led  that  opposition, 
but  the  Duke  of  Rutland.  Lord  Derby,  who  had  hedged  at  the  previous 
session,  now  became  convinced  that  it  was  better  that  the  House  of  Lords 
should  not  persist  in  opposition  to  the  will  of  the  nation.  He  accordingly 
refused  to  join  the  movement  for  a  second  rejection  of  the  pending  measure, 
but  satisfied  himself  with  the  delivery  of  an  ill-timed  philippic  against  the 
chancellor  of  the  exchequer.  Thus  the  bill  for  the  abolition  of  the  duty  on 
paper  was  permitted  to  become  a  law  ;  and  thus  another  of  the  ever-recur- 
ring questions  between  the  two  Houses  of  the  British  Parliament  was 
adjusted  to  the  satisfaction  of  the  popular  branch. 

As  a  part  of  the  history  of  this  epoch  through  which  the  life  line  of 
William  E.  Gladstone  was  distinctly  drawn  we  may  now  revert  to  the 
American  complication  arising  from  the  attitude  taken  by  Great  Britain 
toward  our  country  at  the  outbreak  of  the  civil  war.  The  events  of  that 
day  are  quick  in  the  memories  of  men  still  living.  In  what  we  shall  here 
offer  we  shall,  as  it  were,  put  ourselves  in  the  position  of  Great  Britain,  in 
order  to  explain  a  crisis,  the  portent  of  which  was  dark  enough  to  cast  a 
shadow  for  a  season  over  the  best  parts  of  the  civilized  world. 

In  the  first  place,  there  was  a  great  misunderstanding  between  England 
and   America — between   the   peoples  of  the  two  countries.     Great  Britain 


326  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

could  not  well  realize  that  a  nation,  great  and  independent  as  herself,  had 
been  constituted  west  of  the  Atlantic  under  a  republican  form  of  govern- 
ment. She  was  ready  to  believe  that  such  a  nation  would  fall  asunder  at  a 
touch.  She  was  not  greatly  concerned  to  have  it  the  one  way  or  the  other  ; 
but  her  belief  was  that  a  large  republic  could  not  endure. 

In  America  exactly  the  opposite  opinion  prevailed.  It  prevailed  so 
strongly  that  millions  of  brave  men  were  willing  to  fight  for  it  and  die  for  it. 
America  supposed  that  Great  Britain  would  want  her  to  survive.  There 
was  a  moral  conviction  in  the  United  States  that  England  ought  to  be  in 
sympathy  and  accord  with  an  English-speaking  race  and  nation  on  this  side 
of  the  sea.  The  American  people  knew  well  enough  that  Great  Britain  had 
long  pretended  to  be  in  favor  of  the  abolition  of  slavery,  and  that  she  had 
supported  a  propaganda  against  the  peculiar  institution  in  the  United  States. 
Here  now  a  great  civil  war  had  broken  out,  which  Great  Britain  must  per- 
ceive clearly  enough  to  have  originated  from  the  institution  of  slavery. 
But,  on  the  other  hand,  Great  Britain  was  astonished  to  find  the  government 
of  the  United  States  making  war,  not — according  to  its  own  declaration — 
for  the  destruction  of  African  slavery,  but  simply  and  solely  to  uphold  and 
reestablish  the  Union  ;  that  is,  to  force  the  Union  back  again  on  the  seceded 
States.  Great  Britain  thinks — has  always  thought — that  she  is  the  friend  of 
the  oppressed.  It  is  not  true  that  she  is  so,  but  so  she  believes.  It  is  a 
good  profession  to  make  in  that  High  Court  of  Casuistry  which  she  has 
established  and  maintained  for  centuries,  as  the  final  appeal  in  matters  affect- 
ing the  greater  part  of  her  political,  social,  and  historical  conduct.  Great 
Britain  is  indeed  the  friend  of  the  weaker  party  in  all  the  States  of  the 
world,  except  one — herself.  When  it  comes  to  insurrection  of  any  of  her 
own  subjects,  with  the  prospect  of  losing  territory  and  population  by  suc- 
cessful rebellion  against  the  strong  rule  which  she  has  laid  upon  them,  then 
she  is  no  longer  the  friend  of  the  oppressed,  the  champion  of  the  weaker 
side,  the  avenger  of  the  wrongs  of  those  who  suffer.  Then  she  is  the  friend 
of  order  and  good  government ! 

Much  of  this  spirit  exists  in  America  also.  Our  nation,  in  like 
manner,  is  the  friend  of  insurgents  and  democrats  and  progressive 
freemen  in  all  countries  of  the  world  except  one — the  United  States. 
Nor  is  it  difficult  to  see  how  the  rebellion  of  the  Confederate  States 
would  appear  to  be  a  heinous  crime  to  the  American  people  and  at  the 
same  time  appear  to  be  a  justifiable  resort  to  insurrection  to  the  people  of 
Great  Britain. 

The  fact  is  that  among  nations  it  is  each  one  for  itself.  We  are  not 
aware  that  the  principles  of  a  high  philanthropy,  of  an  unselfish  humanity, 
of  an  altruistic  moral  code,  have  ever  prevailed  in  such  relations  as  those 
which  existed  between  the  United  States  and  Great  Britain  in  t86i.     Each 


BUDGET    OF     1 86 1     AND    AMERICAN    COMPLICATIONS. 


0^7 


nation  seeks  its  own  aggrandizement  and  is  not  hurt  at  witnessing  the  calam- 
ities of  others. 

To  this  add  the  pecuHar  incidents  of  the  great  drama  which  was  then 
enacting.  We  might  well  have  been  spared  the  ordeal  which  came  with  the 
arrest  on  the  high  sea,  under  the  British  flag,  of  Mason  and  Slidell.  Cer- 
tainly Captain  Wilkes,  of  the  San  Jacinto,  was  in  the  right  in  that  matter; 
but  he  was  also  seriously  in  the  wrong.  It  was  one  of  the  most  wrong-right 
actions  of  modern  times.  Perhaps  only  the  great  deed  of  John  Brown  at 
Harper's  Ferry  rises  above  it  in  that  immortal  wrong-righteousness  which 
history  strives  in  vain  to  understand  and  interpret. 

Then  came  the  prodigious  offense  of  Great  Britain  in  opening  her  ship- 
yards for  the  fitting  out  of  war  vessels  intended  for  the  service  of  a  navy 
that  did  not  exist  and  that  never  could  exist.  The  vessels  in  question  were 
to  become  Confederate  cruisers;  that  is,  freebooters  of  the  sea;  that  is, 
buccaneers  and  semipirates.  To  all  this  was  added  the  wise  but  drawling 
correspondence  of  the  American  secretary  of  state.  He  had  to  explain 
everything  and  to  argue  everything.  He  admitted  that  the  seizure  of 
Mason  and  Slidell  was  wrong,  and  in  the  same  communication  proved  that 
it  ought  to  have  been  right !  Great  Britain,  with  an  unseemly  and  stupid 
animosity  that  refused  to  restrain  itself  for  an  hour,  made  haste  to  prepare 
for  war,  just  as  she  had  made  haste  to  recognize  the  belligerency  of  the 
Confederate  States.  She  went  to  hobnobbing  with  France  on  the  question 
of  recognizing  the  independence  of  the  Confederacy.  She  did  everything 
that  was  calculated  to  offend  the  sense  of  justice  in  the  United  States,  and 
nothing  to  conciliate  the  good  opinion  of  our  people. 

Hurt  indeed  Great  Britain  certainly  was  by  our  civil  war.  Her  com- 
merce wMth  the  Southern  States  was  cut  off.  It  was  seen  that  if  those  States 
should  be  independent  then  British  trade  with  the  ports  of  the  South  would 
not  only  be  reopened,  but  greatly  increased.  In  the  year  i860  England 
had  sent  to  America  twenty  millions  of  exports.  All  of  this  was  now  to  be 
interdicted  so  far  as  the  South  was  concerned  by  the  Union  blockade,  and 
so  far  as  the  North  was  concerned  was  to  be  taxed  with  heavy  import 
duties  to  the  extent  of  becoming  in  many  instances  prohibitory.  The  city 
of  Birmingham  by  this  means  was  to  lose  nearly  four  million  pounds  on  her 
export  of  cutlery  to  the  United  States. 

Our  country,  in  order  to  raise  revenues,  turned  quickly  to  protective 
tariffs.  It  was  heavy  duties  on  imports  or  nothing.  In  March  of  1861  the 
London  Times  said  :  "  The  period  between  the  election  of  the  new  Presi- 
dent [Lincoln]  and  the  surrender  of  office  by  the  old  is  a  sort  of  interreg- 
num, in  which  it  may  be  said  all  legislative  and  executive  activity  is  para- 
lyzed. But,  though  unable  to  do  anything  for  the  cause  of  the  Union,  the 
Senate  and  the  Congress  have  employed  the  interregnum  to  strike  a  second 


328  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

blow  at  the  commerce,  the  finance,  and  the  general  prosperity  of  the  coun- 
try infinitely  more  fatal  than  any  abstraction  of  territory  or  diminution  of 
population.  They  employed  the  last  weeks  of  what  is  probably  the  last 
session  of  the  last  Congress  of  the  United  States  of  America  [How  noW; 
evil  prophet?]  in  undoing  all  the  progress  that  has  been  made  in  the  direc- 
tion of  free  trade  and  in  manacling  their  country  once  more  in  the  fetters 
of  a  protection  amounting  to  prohibition." 

We  need  not  enlarge  on  these  conditions  and  dangers.  The  peace  of 
our  country,  already  struggling  to  the  death  with  the  Confederacy, was  seri- 
ously, imperiled  with  Great  Britain.  But  historical  causes  helped  us  and  the 
danger  was  averted.  The  under  man  In  Great  Britain  was  on  our  side. 
Strange  to  narrate  that  in  the  very  places  where  we  should  have  expected 
the  greatest  animosity  to  our  cause  to  exist  there  was  the  greatest  friendli- 
ness, the  greatest  sympathy.  In  the  swarming  manufacturing  centers,  where 
the  supply  of  cotton  from  America  was  cut  off,  and  the  sale  of  British  manu- 
factured goods  to  our  country  destroyed  by  the  disaster  of  our  war,  the 
people,  notwithstanding  their  losses  and  sufferings,  sympathized  strongly 
with  the  national  cause  and  hoped  for  the  restoration  of  the  Union.  John 
Bright,  as  representative  of  these  classes,  was  outspoken  in  his  defense  of 
the  Union  and  the  Union  cause. 

Higher  up  in  the  circles  of  British  life  there  was  a  certain  policy  which 
tended  to  the  same  end.  When  it  came  to  the  issue  of  recognizing  the 
Confederacy  Great  Britain  was  wary.  Lord  John  Russell,  the  foreign 
secretary,  hesitated  to  rush  In  and  recognize  something  that  might  need 
defending.  When  Mason,  the  Confederate  envoy  to  England,  urged  the 
recognition  of  the  Southern  States  as  a  separate  and  independent  power, 
Earl  Russell  replied:  "  In  order  to  be  entitled  to  a  place  among  the  Inde- 
pendent nations  of  the  earth  a  State  ought  not  only  to  have  strength  and 
resources  for  a  time,  but  afford  promise  of  stability  and  permanence.  Should 
the  Confederate  States  of  America  win  that  place  among  nations  it  might 
be  right  for  other  nations  justly  to  acknowledge  an  independence  achieved 
by  victory  and  maintained  by  a  successful  resistance  to  all  attempts  to 
overthrow  It.  That  time,  however,  has  not,  In  the  judgment  of  her  majesty's 
government,  arrived.  Her  majesty's  government,  therefore,  can  only  hope 
that  a  peaceful  termination  of  the  present  bloody  and  destructive  contest 
may  not  be  far  distant."  This  could  not  be  regarded  as  a  highly  philan- 
thropic view  of  the  duty  of  one  great  nation  to  another,  but  it  was  highly 
prudential  and  conservative. 

On  the  whole,  however,  the  government  of  Lord  Palmerston,  corre- 
sponding almost  exactly  in  its  time  relations  with  the  civil  war  In  the 
United  States,  was  not  In  sympathy  with  the  Union  cause,  and  was  in 
sympathy  with  the  Confederacy.     The  aristocracy  of  Great   Britain  antici- 


BUDGET    OF    1861     AND    AMERICAN    COMPLICATIONS.  329 

pated  our  national  end,  and  wished  to  see  it.  As  high  as  the  court  this 
feeling  and  sentiment  prevailed.  It  can  hardly  be  wondered,  therefore,  that 
Mr.  Gladstone,  chancellor  of  the  exchequer,  on  whom  the  duty  was 
devolved  of  providing  the  annual  scheme  for  revenue,  of  guarding  against 
deficits,  of  calculating  accurately  the  expenditures  of  the  kingdom,  and  all 
this  on  the  peril  ever  present  in  the  British  House  of  Commons  of  being 
deposed  from  his  place  in  case  of  failure,  should  follow  the  drift  of  his 
time  and  condition  and  commit  himself  almost  fatally  to  the  secession 
cause. 

That  the  statesman  did  so  was  perhaps  the  greatest  break,  the  greatest 
misfortune,  of  his  career.  True,  he  recovered  himself,  and  corrected  his 
bearings,  as  he  did  in  many  other  instances  of  less  historical  importance. 
But  the  sentiment  with  which  he  was  regarded  in  America  was  greatly 
cooled  by  his  attitude,  and  the  end  of  the  century  and  the  close  of  his  life 
could  not  witness  the  total  extinction  in  the  memories  of  old  Union  soldiers 
and  their  fellow-patriot  civilians  of  the  evil  thing  that  William  E.  Gladstone 
said  against  us  in  the  darkest  days  of  our  national  catastrophe.  True  it  is 
that  he  saw  his  well-planned  budget  of  1861  coming  to  grief  under  the  evil 
results  which  fell  on  British  commerce  at  the  outbreak  of  the  war.  True  it 
is  that  he  could  not  view  with  equanimity  the  dreadful  losses  to  the  British 
revenues.  He  had  to  remember  that  the  cutlery  trade  of  Birmingham 
would  be  reduced  three  million  eight  hundred  thousand  pounds  annually; 
that  the  American  duties  on  the  cotton  goods  of  Manchester  would  virtually 
destroy  that  trade ;  that  the  exports  of  Newcastle  to  our  country  would  be 
stopped ;  that  the  steel  trade  of  Sheffield  would  be  checked  and  the  iron 
trade  of  Wolverhampton  would  be  ruined.  That  all  of  this  should  annoy  a 
chancellor  of  the  exchequer  and  lead  him  into  error  may  well  be  conceded 
as  an  explanation,  but  is  hardly  satisfactory  as  an  apology  for  Mr.  Glad- 
stone's attitude. 

It  was  in  August  of  1862  that  he  went  to  Newcastle,  and  delivered  a 
speech  which  was  heard  on  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic.  It  became  memo- 
rable in  both  England  and  America.  It  was  repeated  with  rising  hope 
throughout  the  Confederacy,  and  read  in  gloom  and  wrath  by  the  Union 
people  of  the  great  North.  In  this  speech  Mr.  Gladstone  declared  that 
Jefferson  Davis  and  his  fellow-patriots  had  created  a  nation  in  a  day.  They 
had  led  the  insurrection  of  the  Southern  States  of  America  in  their  cause 
against  the  old  government,  and  had  made  themselves  independent.  He 
spoke  of  the  matter  as  though  it  were  fait  accompli.  He  went  so  far  as  to 
indicate  the  advantageous  results  which  must  arise  to  Great  Britain.  He 
echoed  the  sentiments  of  the  London  Times,  showing  how  the  Southern 
Confederacy  would  of  course  desire  no  better  than  to  make  Charleston, 
Savannah,  Mobile,  and  New  Orleans  depots  of  English  manufactures,  "to  be 


330  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

smuggled  across  the  long  and  imperceptible  frontier  which  separates  them 
from  the  United  States." 

Such  declaration  crave  ereat  offense  in  the  United  States  and  for  the 
time  injured  j\Ir.  Gladstone's  reputation  in  his  own  country.  Many  strong- 
men in  Encrland  never  wavered  in  their  conviction  that  the  cause  of  the 
Union  would  ultimately  prevail  and  that  that  cause  should  be  supported 
with  the  active  sympathy  of  England.  Such  were  the  views  of  John  Bright, 
Richard  Cobden,  John  Stuart  Mill,  Milner  Gibson,  William  E.  Forster,  and 
the  Earl  of  Clarendon.  To  this  strong  phalanx  of  statesmen  and  publicists 
Mr.  Gladstone's  utterance  was  almost  as  offensive  as  it  was  to  the  upholders 
of  the  Union  cause  in  America. 

It  could  not  be  said  that  this  unfortunate  circumstance  in  Gladstone's 
career  was  ineffaceable.  Time  modifies  much,  and  obliterates  much  more. 
After  a  lifetime,  there  is  fortunately  but  little  remaining  bitterness  in  the 
hearts  of  any  portion  of  the  American  people  springing  from  the  far-off 
boiling  fountains  of  our  bloody  national  tragedy.  Besides,  in  Mr.  Gladstone's 
case  he  had  become,  or  was  rapidly  becoming,  not  only  a  liberal  statesman, 
so  called,  but  the  great  leader  of  the  Liberal  JDarty.  This  word  liberal  has 
been  a  magic  word  in  America.  It  has  signified  to  the  great  majority  of 
Americans  all  that  is  good  and  all  that  is  prophetic  in  the  public  and  social 
life  of  a  nation. 

To  be  liberal  in  Gladstone's  case  was  to  be  popular  in  the  United 
States  ;  the  more  liberal  the  better,  from  our  point  of  view.  His  attitude 
on  all  questions  of  policy,  whether  national  or  int-ernational,  after  the  period 
of  the  civil  war,  was  greatly  acceptable  to  a  large  majority  of  the  American 
people.  Meanwhile  a  new  generation  arose,  knowing  little  of  the  old 
memory  and  score  against  the  British  statesman.  Th^y  of  this  generation 
joined,  therefore,  with  the  greater  number  of  their  fathers  in  accepting  the 
sobriquet  of  the  "  Grand  Old  Man,"  and  of  applauding  him  even  to  the 
doorway  of  his  exit  from  the  world. 

Mr.  Gladstone  was  very  far  from  failing  to  understand  his  faux  pas  on 
the  American  issue.  The  event  of  our  conflict,  foreshadowing  itself  by  the 
beginning  of  1864,  helped  him  to  a  clearer  apprehension  of  his  mistake. 
The  criticisms  of  his  own  countrymen  promoted  the  same  favorable  rectifi- 
cation of  his  judgment.  Just  five  years  after  the  Newcastle  speech  he  made 
the  amende  honorable  as  fully  as  possible,  in  a  letter  written  to  a  friend, 
Mr.  Cyrus  W.  Field,  in  New  York  city.  In  that  communication,  among 
other  things,  he  said:  "  I  must  confess  that  I  was  wrong ;  that  I  took  too 
much  upon  myself  in  expressing  such  an  opinion.  Yet  the  motive  was  not 
bad.  My  sympathies  were  then — where  they  had  long  before  been,  where 
they  are  now — with  the  whole  American  people.  I  probably,  like  many 
Europeans,  did  not  understand   the  nature   and  working  of  the  American 


BUDGET    OF    1 86 1    AND    AMERICAN    COMPLICATIONS. 


33i 


Union.  I  had  imbibed  conscientiously,  if  erroneously,  an  opinion  that 
twenty  or  twenty-four  millions  of  the  North  would  be  happier  and  would  be 
stronger  (of  course  assuming  that  they  would  hold  together)  without  the 
South  than  with  it,  and  also  that  the  Negroes  would  be  much  nearer  to 
emancipation  under  a  Southern  government  than  under  the  old  system  of 
the  Union,  which  had  not  at  that  date  [August,  1862]  been  abandoned,  and 
which  always  appeared  to  me  to  place  the  whole  power  of  the  North"*  at  the 
command  of  the  slaveholdins:  interests  of  the  South.  As  far  as  regards  the 
special  or  separate  interest  of  England  in  the  matter,  I,  differing  from  many 
others,  had  always  contended  that  it  was  best  for  our  interest  that  the  Union 
should  be  kept  entire." 


LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 


CHAPTER    XIX. 

Other  Budgets  of  the  Palmerston  Regime. 

E  come  now  to  the  subject  of  the  budget  of  1862.  The  same 
was  presented  to  Parliament  on  the  3d  of  April  in  that  year. 
The  document  was  conservative,  and  was  somewhat  less  elab- 
orate than  its  predecessor.  Indeed,  there  was  little  occasion  for 
the  oratorical  methods  that  the  chancellor  of  the  exchequer  had 
hitherto  employed ;  for  the  new  policy  of  Great  Britain  might  now  be 
regarded  as  an  established  fact,  and  need  not  be  argued  further.  More- 
over, the  circumstances  were  not  such  as  to  make  Mr.  Gladstone  at  all 
jubilant.  The  evil  effects  of  the  civil  war  in  America  were  discoverable  in 
the  British  revenues.  The  exports  from  our  mother  island  to  the  United 
States  had  fallen  off  from  twenty-one  million  six  hundred  and  sixty-seven 
thousand  pounds  to  nine  million  fifty-eight  thousand  pounds.  Here  was  an 
appalling  commercial  loss  of  more  than  twelve  and  a  half  millions.  Idle- 
ness in  England  had  become  enforced  and  distress  a  necessary  consequence. 
Another  bad  harvest  had  supervened.  Every  large  town  and  city  in  Great 
Britain  swarmed  with  mendicants.  London  was  overrun  with  them  until 
the  municipal  provisions  for  the  poor  had  to  be  supplemented  with  private 
charities  and  organized  social  aid. 

Nevertheless  Mr.  Gladstone  came  boldly  and  cheerfully  to  his  task. 
He  showed  that  the  working  of  the  commercial  treaty  with  France  had  been 
salutary,  and  that  the  revenue  from  that  source  had  increased  by  at  least 
two  million  pounds.  He  regretted  to  say  that  there  had  been  a  correspond- 
ing increase  in  the  expenditures.  Certain  supplementary  grants  of  1861  had 
to  be  added  to  the  aggregate  of  expenses.  A  division  of  British  troops  had 
been  necessarily  retained  in  eastern  Asia.  It  had  become  necessary  to  send 
a  small  army  to  Canada.  The  total  expenditures  for  the  fiscal  year  1860-61 
amounted  to  seventy-two  million  five  hundred  and  four  thousand  pounds. 
This  had  to  be  met  with  a  revenue  of  sixty-nine  million  six  hundred  and 
seventy  thousand  pounds.  The  revenue  had  decreased  by  eight  hundred 
and  nine  thousand  pounds  ;  for  the  income  tax  had  been  reduced  a  penny  a 
pound,  and  the  abolition  of  the  paper  duty  had  involved  a  loss  of  six  hun- 
dred and  sixty-five  thousand  pounds.  A  change  in  the  credits,  or  the  system 
of  credits,  had  left  the  treasury  short  a  million  a  hundred  and  twenty-two 
thousand  pounds  on  the  score  of  the  malt  duty. 

It  could  not  be  said,  however,  that  the  revenues  were  actually  declining. 
There  had  been  an  increase  in  the  customs  within  nine  months  of  four  hun- 
dred and  sixty-eight  thousand  pounds,  being  by  that  much  in  excess  of  the 
estimates.     The  reduction  of  the  taxes  on  distilled  spirits,  hops,  and  paper 


OTHER    BUDGETS    OF    THE    PALMERSTON    REGIME.  333 

had  brought  a  loss  of  four  hundred  and  fifty-six  thousand  pounds.  Nor  had 
the  amount  realized  from  the  Chinese  indemnity  been  as  great  as  was  antici- 
pated by  two  hundred  and  seventy-two  thousand  pounds.  The  total  esti- 
mate of  expenditure  for  the  ensuing  year  was  seventy  million  and  forty 
thousand  pounds,  and  the  total  revenue  seventy  million  a  hundred  and 
ninety  thousand  pounds.  This  would  bring  the  estimated  expenditures 
within  the  estimated  revenues,  but  would  leave  no  considerable  surplus. 
The  government  would  run  this  risk  rather  than  impose  new  taxes. 

The  chancellor  of  the  exchequer  regretted  to  say  that  the  existing  taxes 
could  not  for  the  present  be  reduced  ;  but  the  reductions  already  provided 
for  would  relieve  the  people  during  the  next  fiscal  year  of  not  less  than  six 
hundred  thousand  pounds.  The  duties  on  spirits  might  remain  as  they 
were  ;  so  also  the  duties  on  sugar.  Nor  would  the  speaker  make  any  rec- 
ommendations as  to  a  change  in  the  case  of  malt.  The  wine  trade  had 
increased  under  the  freer  system  of  commerce.  Nevertheless  he  suggested 
the  raising  of  the  scale  of  duty  on  certain  wines,  by  which  there  would  be  a 
gain  of  fifteen  thousand  pounds  a  year.  On  the  whole  the  budget  was  less 
elaborate  and  radical  than  was  its  predecessor,  and  the  presentation  of  it 
somewhat  less  confident  and  spectacular. 

The  existing  condition  of  affairs  gave  full  opportunity  for  criticism  and 
assault.  Mr.  Disraeli  was  now  able  to  make  a  direct  attack.  He  began  his 
speech  as  leader  of  the  opposition  with  the  charge  that  Mr.  Gladstone  had 
been  profuse  in  his  expenditures.  He  had  repealed  the  duty  on  paper 
against  the  judgment  of  the  House  of  Lords  and  the  better  judgment  of  the 
English  people,  and  had  thereby  lost  a  million  and  a  half  pounds.  He 
had  done  this  for  the  sake  of  a  barren  triumph  over  the  House  of  Lords. 
The  chancellor  of  the  exchequer  had  thought  that  the  loss  from  the  aboli- 
tion of  the  paper  duty  would  be  six  hundred  and  fifty-five  thousand  pounds. 
As  matter  of  fact  it  was  eight  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  pounds. 

Continuing  his  philippic  Mr.  Disraeli  said  :  "  The  right  honorable  gen- 
tleman never  proposes  a  vote — and  it  falls  to  him  to  propose  the  most  pro- 
fuse votes  that  any  minister  in  time  of  peace  ever  brought  forward — he 
never  does  this  without  an  intimation  that  he  does  not  in  his  heart  sanction 
the  expenditure  he  recommends.  .  .  .  How  is  it  that  the  party  which 
preaches  retrenchment  and  reduction — who  believe  all  our  estimates, 
especially  the  naval  and  military  estimates,  are  much  too  extravagant — who 
are  opposed  to  fortifications  and  who  do  not  much  like  iron  ships — how  is  it 
that  this  party  always  support  a  minister  who  is  bringing  forward  these 
excessive  estimates  and  who  provides  for  this  enormous  expenditure  ?  Well, 
that  is  a  great  question.  This  at  least  we  know,  that  while  the  spendthrift 
is  weeping  over  pence — while  this  penurious  prodigal  is  proposing  this  enor- 
mous expenditure — he  always  contrives  to  repeal  some  tax  to  gratify  the 


334  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

interests  or  prejudices  of  the  party  of  retrenchment.  No  wonder,  then,  we 
hear  no  longer  the  same  character  of  the  income  tax ;  no  wonder  we  are  no 
longer  reminded  of  that  compact  entered  into  by  the  House  and  accepted 
by  the  country  for  its  gradual  and  permanent  abolition.  Unless  the  House 
expresses,  on  a  fitting  occasion,  its  opinion,  there  is  very  little  hope  of  our 
obtaining  any  redress  in  this  respect.  .  .  .  Who  will  deny  that  this  position 
of  affairs  is  peculiar  and  perilous  ?  I  remember  some  years  ago,  when  the 
right  honorable  gentleman  was  at  the  head  of  a  small  party,  not  then 
absorbed  in  the  gulf  of  Liberalism,  that  we  heard  much  prattle  about  politi- 
cal morality.  What  then  most  distinguished  the  right  honorable  gentleman 
and  his  friends  was  their  monopoly  of  that  admirable  quality.  They  were 
perpetually  thanking  God  that  they  were  not  as  other  men,  and  always 
pointing  their  fingers  at  those  unfortunate  wights  who  sat  opposite  to  them. 
Now  we  see  the  end  of  '  political  morality.'  We  see  the  position  to  which 
political  morality  has  brought  the  finance  of  a  great  nation.  I  denounce 
this  system  as  one  detrimental  to  the  character  of  public  men  and  most 
injurious  to  the  fortunes  of  the  realm." 

The  speeches  of  Disraeli  were  never  wanting  in  pith.  Whether  they 
were  deduced  from  substantial  fact,  or  evolved  out  of  his  own  consciousness, 
they  were  equally  shrewd,  witty,  and  effective.  On  the  present  occasion  he 
knew,  perhaps,  that  it  was  useless  to  attack  the  provisions  of  the  budget,  and 
he  was  probably  more  concerned  to  make  a  dramatic  and  oratorical  display 
than  to  accomplish  any  definite  result. 

Gladstone  in  answer  was  able  to  remind  the  House  that,  as  to  the 
alleged  extravagant  expenditures  in  the  matter  of  fortifications,  he  had  him- 
self forewarned  the  Commons  and  protested  against  it.  He  again  referred 
to  the  alternative  which  had  been  before  the  House  of  removing  the  duty 
either  on  paper  or  on  tea.  Choosing  the  latter  the  loss  to  the  revenues 
would  have  been  much  greater  than  choosing  the  former.  As  to  the  charge 
of  profusion  in  expenditure  brought  by  the  leader  of  the  opposition,  that 
charge  was  more  fit  for  himself  than  for  the  speaker.  He  said,  in  a  tone 
approaching  bitterness,  that  better  men  than  himself  had  been  vituperated 
by  the  right  honorable  gentleman  who  had  preceded  him.  In  this  manner 
he  went  on  to  refute  the  charges  made  by  his  opponents. 

Sir  Stafford  Northcote,  who  had  been  Mr.  Gladstone's  secretary  when 
President  of  the  Board  of  Trade  under  Sir  Robert  Peel,  was  answered  in 
the  same  stiff  and  effective  manner  which  the  chancellor  of  the  exchequer 
had  employed  against  Mr.  Disraeli.  Sir  Stafford  had  committed  the  indis- 
cretion of  making  a  garbled  excerpt  from  a  speech  delivered  by  Mr. 
Gladstone  at  Manchester,  and  the  latter  punished  him  by  exposing  and 
repudiating  the  false  construction  put  upon  his  words.  He  continued  the 
refutation  till  his  opponents  were  silenced,  and  the  bills  covering  the  recom- 


OTHER    BUDGETS    OF    THE    PALMERSTON    REGIME.  335 

mendations  of  the  budget  were  passed  by  the  House  and  sent  for  approval 
or  disapproval  to  the  Lords. 

Once  more  the  Italian  question  flared  up  in  the  Commons.  The  par- 
ticular champions  of  the  old  order  in  Italy  were,  as  we  have  seen  before, 
Sir  George  Bowyer  and  Mr.  Pope  Hennessy.  The  former  sought  to  make 
himself  the  champion  of  the  papal  interest  and  the  latter  to  display  his 
powers  as  an  advocate  of  political  reaction  and  general  Bourbon  ism  in 
Europe.  When  Parliament  was  about  to  adjourn,  in  April  of  1862,  these 
'"gentlemen  sought  strenuously  to  evoke  the  sympathy,  or  at  least  the  atten- 
^  tion,  of  the  House  to  the  cause  for  which  they  were  anxious  to  plead.  It 
seemed  astonishing,  in  consideration  of  the  fact  that  the  revolution  in  Italy 
had  already  abolished  the  old  order  and  substituted  the  new,  that  English 
parliamentarians  should  still  hug  tHe  Belttsion  of  dethroning  the  present, 
bastardizing  the  future,  and  reinstating  the  past.  The  effort  of  the  gentle- 
men referred  to  provoked  little' 'else  besides  derision  in  the  House,  but 
furnished  an  opportunity  to  Mr!' Gladstone  to  speak  effectively^  and  conclu- 
sively in  answer  to  their  evil  prophecies.  ,, 

In  the  first  place  the  chancellor  of  tHe  ■e'kchequer  said  that  there  was  a 
serious  general  objection  to  the'  discussi(lii''bf'':the 'internal  affairs  of  Italy 
in  the  British  House  of  Commons.  The  two  countries  were  at  peace. 
There  was  no  reason  to  break'  the  peace  or  to  mar  it.  Eaclh  nation  had 
its  own  concerns,  its  own  rights,  artd  its  own  destiny.  If  the  question  were 
international  instead  of  national  then  it  might  be  a  proper  theme  of  discus- 
sion in  Parliament,  but  it  was  not  international.  He  characterized  tHe 
speech  of  Sir  George  Bowyer  as  an  astonishing  example  of  the  power  of 
paradox.  The  honorable  gentleman  had  seemed  to  play  upon  the  credulity 
of  the  House.  The  speech  to' which  they  had  just  listened  was  an  astound- 
ing example  of  that  kind  of  address  which  could  be  built  upon  alleged 
facts.  Sir  George  Bowyer  had  related  marvels  which  would  be  regarded 
by  the  House  as  marvels,  and  no  more!  He  might' cite  a  particular 
instance  in  the  case  of  the  downfall  of  the  late"'kingdbm.  of  4;he:  Two  Sici- 
lies. "  My  honorable  and  learned  friend,"  said  Mr.''  Gladstone,  with  sonie 
sarcasm  in  his  tone,  "  was  so  kind  as  to  ascribe'  to  me  some  infinitesimal 
share  in  removing  from  the  world  the  sorrow  and  iniquity  which  once 
oppressed  that  unhappy  country.  I  should  take  it  as  a  favor  if  the  charge 
were  made  truly,  but  I  claim  or  assume  no  such  office.  Here  is  a  country 
which  my  honorable  and  learned  friend  says  is,  with  a  few  miserable  excep- 
tions amongst  the  middle  classes,  fondly  attached  to  the  expelled  dynasty, 
and  what  happened  there  }  An  adventurer.  Garibaldi,  clothed  in  a  red 
shirt,  and  some  volunteers  also  clothed  in  red  shirts,  land  at  a  point  in  the 
peninsula,  march  through  Calabria,  face  a  sovereign  with  a  well-disciplined 
army  of  thirty  thousand   men   and  a  fleet  probably  the  best  in   Itah',  and 


33^ 


LIFE    AND    TJMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 


that  sovereign  disappears  before  them  like  a  mockery  king  of  snow  !  And 
yet  such  is  the  power  of  paradox  that  my  honorable  and  learned  friend  still 
argues  for  the  affectionate  loyalty  of  the  Neapolitans,  as  if  such  results 
could  have  been  achieved  anywhere  save  where  the  people  were  alienated 
from  the  throne." 

In   this  manner  Mr.  Gladstone  continued  to  throw  larger  shells  into 


GARIBALDI    ADDRESSING   THE    ITALIAN    PARLIAMENT. 

the  enemy's  camp  than  were  needed  for  its  demolition.  Sir  George  Bow- 
yer  had  very  inaccurately  complained  that  the  revolutionary  results  in  Italy, 
that  is,  United  Italy,  had  not  been  recognized  by  the  continental  powers, 
with  the  exception  of  France,  and  that,  subserviently  following  the  lead  of 
France,  Great  Britain  had  acknowledged  the  kingdom  of  Italy.  This  was 
so  far  from  the  well-known  facts  as  to  create  derision  in  the  House.  Glad- 
stone replied  that,  admitting  the   correctness  of  the  honorable  gentleman's 


OTHER    BUDGETS    OF    THE    PALMERSTON    REGIME.  T^T^J 

history,  it  was  nevertheless  sufficient  that  England  and  France  should 
recognize  a  new  State  to  make  it  so  !  The  speaker  said  that  not  only  did 
he  approve  the  things  thus  far  accomplished  by  the  revolution  in  Italy, 
but  that  he  also  hoped  to  see  that  revolution  move  forward  with  steady 
strides  until  the  Eternal  City  should  fall  before  it.  He  cherished  this  hope 
because  he  desired  the  peace  of  Europe  and  the  humanizing  of  mankind. 
He  spoke  in  urgent  criticism  of  the  policy  of  the  pope  in  attempting  to 
prolong  a  temporal  power  which  history  no  longer  recognized.  The  papal 
claim  was  inimical,  not  only  to  the  Italians,  but  in  a  sense  to  all  Europe. 

As  for  Italy,  that  great  power  was  marching  on  to  a  high  rank  among 
the  nations.  He  declared  that  he  had  no  hesitation  in  saying  that  he 
believed  it  a  special  part  of  the  duty  and  mission  of  her  majesty's  govern- 
ment to  be  the  true  expositor  and  reflex  of  the  sentiment  of  the  people  of 
England  on  a  question  of  so  great  importance  as  that  of  the  revolution  in 
Italy.  He  believed  that  this  view  would  tend  to  preserve  a  high  and  sacred 
principle  of  British  polity  and  at  the  same  time  promote  the  future  tran- 
quillity of  Europe,  "  1  believe,  too,"  said  he,  "  so  far  as  the  judgment  of 
England  is  concerned,  never  was  that  judgment  pronounced  on  any  public 
question  at  home  or  abroad  with  greater  unanimity  or  clearness,  and  that 
there  will  not  be  any  chapter  of  the  life  of  my  noble  friend  [Lord  Palmer- 
ston]  on  which  Englishmen  will  probably  dwell  with  greater  satisfaction 
than  that  in  which  it  shall  be  recorded  that,  not  now  alone,  but  for  many 
years  past,  before  the  question  had  arisen  to  the  magnitude  of  its  present 
position,  through  evil  report  and  through  good  report,  he  sustained  and 
supported  the  cause  of  Italy." 

We  may  here  dismiss  the  Italian  question  from  further  consideration. 
The  revolution  headed  by  Garibaldi  and  organized  into  victory  by  Victor 
Emmanuel  worked  out  its  own  salutary  results.  Rome  did  fall  before  the 
movement,  and  became  the  capital  of  United  Italy.  The  new  order  con- 
firmed itself  and  was  recognized  throughout  Europe  and  the  world.  Nor 
is  it  likely  that  the  Italian  transformation  was  either  greatly  promoted  or 
seriously  retarded  by  the  attitude  of  the  other  European  powers  with 
respect  thereto.  The  movement  was  born  of  conditions  that  were  south  of 
the  Alps.  The  age  was  ripe  for  the  great  change  by  which  the  dissevered 
and  hostile  fragments  of  Italy  were  aroused  from  their  petty  localisms  and 
fused  into  one,  under  the  enthusiasm  of  a  common  cause. 

Mr.  Gladstone  never  lost  his  hold  upon  the  general  confidence  and 
admiration  of  his  fellow-countrymen.  He  was  a  popular  man,  and  was  in 
demand  by  society  for  many  ends  and  aims  that  were  not  political.  His 
life  was  peculiarly  happy  in  the  invitations  which  he  received  and  accepted 
to  participate  in  the  social  and  moral  affairs  of  England.  An  instance  of 
this  kind,  belonging  to  the  year  1862,  was  the  part  which  he  was  called  to 


338  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

take  as  spokesman  in  the  presentation  of  a  memorial  to  the  tra^^edian 
Charles  John  Kean,  son  and  successor  of  the  great  Edmund  Kean,  on  the 
English  stage.  The  popularity  and  influence  of  the  younger  Kean  rivaled 
but  did  not  equal  that  of  his  father.  His  reputation  was  enhanced  by  his 
marriage,  in  1842,  with  the  distinguished  actress  Ellen  Tree,  who  shared 
with  him  afterward  his  histrionic  honors,  much  as  in  the  case  of  the  Ken- 
dalls in  our  own  clay. 

There  was  something  peculiarly  appropriate  in  the  choice  of  Mr.  Glad- 
stone as  speaker  on  the  occasion  of  the  testimonial.  A  silver  service  of 
great  value  and  beauty  had  been  subscribed  by  the  fellows  and  students  of 
Eton,  of  which  school  Mr.  Kean,  as  well  as  Gladstone,  was  a  graduate.  The 
ceremony  took  place  in  St.  James's  Hall.  It  had  been  intended  that  the 
Duke  of  Newcastle, also  an  Etonian,  should  make  the  presentation  address; 
but  that  statesman,  having  been  called  to  attend  the  queen,  could  not  per- 
form the  duty  assigned,  which  was  assumed,  on  invitation,  by  Mr.  Gladstone. 

His  speech  was  pleasing  and  appropriate.  He  praised  Mr.  Kean  as  one 
of  those  actors  who  had  done  much  to  preserve  the  dignity  and  classical 
character  of  the  English  stage.  He  had  been  a  promoter  of  the  Shakes- 
perean  revival,  and  had  contributed  a  powerfuT influence  to  rescue  dramati- 
cal representations  from  buffoonery  and  immorality.  The  recipient  had  been 
single-minded  in  the  prosecution  of  his  professional  career.  All  England 
admired  him,  and  he  (Mr.  Gladstone)  cherished  the  hope  that  other  actors 
would  imitate  his  great  and  salutary  example. 

We  need  not  dwell  at  length  upon  the  budget  presented  by  Mr.  Glad- 
stone at  the  session  of  1863.  It  is  to  be  noted,  however,  that  his  polic\', 
fairly  instituted  only  three  years  before,  by  this  time  began  to  show  its 
beneficial  effects  on  the  revenues  of  the  kingdom.  Notwithstanding  all  the 
drawbacks  of  the  time  and  circumstances  the  chancellor  of  the  exchequer 
was  now  able  to  show  a  surplus  over  expenditures.  This  fact  was  seen  to 
foretoken  another  contest  in  Parliament;  for  a  surplus  always  suggests  to 
the  British  mind  the  reduction  of  taxation.  Whatever  else  may  be  said  of 
the  Briton,  he  is  a  good  economist.  One  of  his  most  striking  peculiarities 
is  his  dislike  of  taxation.  Havinof  the  constitutional  riofht  of  taxinof  himself 
he  exercises  that  right  as  sparingly  as  possible.  And  why  should  he  not.-^ 
Man,  being  human,  does  not  care  to  give  something  for  nothing. 

We  must  allow  that  the  greater  part  of  the  enormous  taxes  in  civilized 
nations  are  in  the  nature  of  something  for  nothing;  that  is,  so  far  as  the 
people  are  concerned.  At  the  juncture  of  which  we  speak  the  two  forms 
of  taxes  most  likely  to  be  assailed  were  the  income  tax  and  the  duty  on  tea. 
Opposition  to  these  two  forms  of  rating  the  people  arose  from  the  opposite 
extremes  of  British  society.  The  aristocracy  hated  the  income  tax,  and  the 
people  hated  the  tax  on  tea. 


OTHER    BUDGETS    OF    THE    PALMERSTON    REGIME.  2)39 

It  was  on  the  i6th  of  April,  1863,  that  Mr.  Gladstone  appeared  in  the 
House  with  his  budget  for  that  year.  In  beginning  his  statement  he 
referred  to  the  absorbing  interest  which  his  former  documents  had  possessed, 
on  account  of  the  peculiar  circumstances  out  of  which  they  had  been  pro- 
duced. He  called  attention  to  the  fact  that  it  had  been  the  purpose  of  the 
House  and  the  country  that  certain  extraordinary  expenditures  incurred  in 
the  last  few  years  on  the  score  of  the  national  defenses  should  cease  at  the 
earliest  practicable  date  To  this  effect  the  House  of  Commons  had  passed 
a  resolution.  The  government  was  now  prepared  to  make  its  answer  to  the 
demand  of  the  country. 

The  speaker  said  that  in  three  years,  froin  185S  to  1861,  the  national 
expenditures  had  increased  more  than  eight  million  pounds.  This  increase 
was  traceable  to  the  charge  for  fortifications.  Including  that  charge  the 
present  annual  aggregate  of  expenditure  was  seventy-one  million  a  hun- 
dred and  ninety-five  thousand  pounds.  He  then  traced  the  gradual  rise  in 
this  aggregate  for  several  preceding  years,  extending  his  calculation  as  far 
back  as  1853.  The  speaker  said  that  it  had  been  necessary  in  accordance 
with  the  will  of  the  nation  to  improve  the  national  defenses.  He  was  con- 
fident that  her  majesty's  government  had  not  overstepped  the  public  wish 
in  this  matter.  Following  the  sentiment  of  the  nation  the  treasury  had  been 
hard  pressed  for  at  least  four  years.  He  was  now  prepared  to  present  a 
more  pleasing  prospect  for  the  finances. 

There  were  certain  circumstances,  however,  which  must  still  be  regarded, 
such  as  the  hardships  of  the  people  in  Lancashire.  The  people  of  that  prov- 
ince were  true  Englishmen.  Among  them  were  to  be  seen  the  symbols  and 
tokens  of  English  progress  and  greatness.  There,  too,  might  be  seen  the 
evidences  of  moral  strength.  There  had  been  hardship  and  suffering  aris- 
ing from  commercial  and  industrial  conditions  ;  and  out  of  the  hardship 
great  and  salutary  lessons  might  be  learned.  The  power  of  endurance 
under  distress  could  not  be  too  highly  commanded.  The  manufacturing- 
material  of  the  artisans  of  Lancashire  had  so  increased  in  price  as  to  close 
the  factories.  Cotton  had  advanced  in  a  single  year  from  eightpence  to 
tw'o  shillings  a  pound.  It  seemed  impossible  for  the  prosperity  or  e\en 
the  comfort  of  a  manufacturing  center  to  be  maintained  under  such 
conditions. 

There  was  similar  hardship  in  Ireland.  The  agricultural  interests  in 
that  country  were  greatly  depressed.  Within  a  period  of  seven  ^^ears  prod- 
ucts had  fallen  off  by  nearly  a  third  of  the  whole.  All  of  these  troublous  and 
distressing  conditions  had  impaired  the  revenue.  Mr.  Gladstone  thought 
that  for  the  ensuing  fiscal  year  the  expenditures  would  amount  to  sixty- 
seven  million  seven  hundred  and  forty-nine  thousand  pounds;  and  the  rev- 
enue he  estimated  at  seventy-one  million  four  hundred  and  ninety  thousand 


340  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

pounds.  This  showed  a  balance  in  favor  of  the  treasury  of  three  million 
seven  hundred  and  forty-one  thousand  pounds. 

Mr.  Gladstone  then  went  on  to  deal  with  the  question  of  the  surplus. 
How  should  the  surplus  be  applied.^  Pi' mm  facie  there  would  be  an  expec- 
tation of  a  large  reduction  in  taxation.  The  House  must,  however,  consider 
certain  anomalous  conditions  by  which  the  treasury  was  bound.  He  thought 
it  well  in  the  first  place  to  raise  the  duty  on  chicory  so  as  to  prevent  the 
adulteration  of  coffee  with  that  article.  He  thought  that  clubs,  being  large 
consumers  of  spirits,  ought  to  pay  thereon  the  same  duties  as  were  paid  by 
the  keepers  of  hotels  and  coffee  houses.  Those  who  held  licenses  to  sell 
beer  under  the  general  provisions  of  a  license  to  sell  distilled  spirits  should 
pay  for  an  additional  license.  As  to  wholesale  dealers,  he  recommended 
that  they  might,  under  a  general  license  of  one  pound,  be  permitted  to  sell 
in  quantities  or  packages  of  less  than  two  dozen  bottles. 

Common  carriers  might  be  permitted  to  ply  their  vocation  under  license 
costing  one  half  as  much  as  that  charged  for  the  stage-carriage  licenses. 
Railways  ought  to  be  charged  a  general  rate  of  three  and  a  half  per  cent  for 
all  their  traffic,  including  excursion  trains.  He  recommended  the  equaliza- 
tion of  duties  on  legacies,  whether  in  Ireland  or  in  England;  also  that 
endowed  charities  should  not  be  exempt  from  the  provisions  of  the  income 
tax,  though  the  buildings  and  grounds  of  such  institutions  should  still  have 
the  benefits  of  exemption. 

More  particularly  the  chancellor  of  the  exchequer  recommended  the 
abolition  of  the  duty  of  one  penny  on  packages  of  goods,  and  also  the  duty 
of  one  shilling  sixpence  on  each  bill  of  lading.  He  proposed  in  the  next 
place  to  set  free  all  incomes  between  one  hundred  pounds  and  two  hundred 
pounds.  As  to  the  great  question  of  a  reduction  of  the  taxes  on  tea  and 
sugar,  he  thought  that  it  would  be  better  to  strike  off  the  duty  on  one  of  the 
articles  rather  than  to  reduce  it  on  both.  He  therefore  recommended  a 
reduction  of  one  shilling  a  pound  in  the  duty  on  tea,  whereby  he  thought 
the  revenue  would  be  decreased  for  the  ensuing  year  by  a  million  three  hun- 
dred thousand  pounds.  The  loss  from  the  reductions  in  the  income  tax 
would  be  about  two  million  three  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  pounds 
annually.  Besides  this  he  would  recommend  that  the  general  rate  of  tax- 
ation be  reduced  by  twopence  the  pound.  From  these  several  items  he 
would  secure  a  total  relief  to  the  taxpayers  for  the  ensuing  year  of  three 
million  three  hundred  and  forty  thousand  pounds.  This  he  thought  he 
might  accomplish  and  still  have  a  working  surplus  of  about  four  hundred 
thousand  pounds  for  the  following  year. 

After  this  Mr.  Gladstone  again  reviewed  the  history  of  the  revenues 
and  expenditures  of  Great  Britain  during  the  period  of  his  incumbency  in 
office.     In   several  matters  he  went   back  further,  adducing  many  facts  of 


OTHER    BUDGETS    OF    THE    PALMERSTON    REGIME.  34I 

interest  to  the  House  and  the  people  of  Great  Britain,  He  was  able  to 
make  a  favorable  comparison  between  the  financial  progress  of  the  country 
and  that  of  other  nations.  He  urged  that  it  was  the  business  of  a  finance 
minister  in  making  his  annual  reports  to  keep  ever  in  view  the  honor,  the 
interests,  and  security  of  the  country;  "and  next  to  that  honor,"  said  he, 
"  those  interests  and  that  security,  the  deliberate  judgment  given  by  the 
House  of  Commons  in  the  last  session  of  Parliament.  But,  subject  to  these 
considerations,  as  I  trust  I  may  also  say  both  on  my  own  behalf  and  on  that 
of  my  colleagues,  it  is  to  us  a  matter  of  additional  satisfaction,  after  reading 
the  eloquent  denunciation  of  the  finance  minister  of  France,  if,  while  we 
submit  a  plan  which  offers  no  inconsiderable  diminution  of  the  burdens  of 
the  people,  we  can  also  minister  ever  so  remotely  to  the  adoption  of  like 
measures  in  other  lands  ;  if  we  may  hope  that  a  diminished  expenditure  for 
England  will  be  construed  across  the  Channel  as  the  friendly  acceptance  of 
a  friendly  challenge,  and  that  what  we  propose,  and  what  Parliament  may  be 
pleased  to  accept,  may  act  as  an  indirect,  yet  powerful,  provocative  to  sim- 
ilar proceedings  abroad.  Gratifying  it  must  ever  be  to  the  advisers  of  the 
British  crown  that  the  British  people  should  enjoy  an  alleviation  of  their 
burdens  ;  but,  over  and  above  the  benefit  to  them,  and  the  satisfaction  to 
us,  there  will  be  a  further  benefit,  and  a  further  pleasure,  if  we  may  hope 
that  we  are  allying  ourselves  with,  and  confirming  such  tendencies  as  may 
exist  elsewhere  on  behalf  of  peace,  of  order,  and  of  civilization,  and  that  we 
are  assisting,  in  however  humble  a  degree,  to  allay  unhappy  jealousies,  to 
strengthen  the  sentiments  of  good  will,  and  to  bring  about  a  better  and 
more  solid  harmony  among  the  greatest  of  the  civilized  nations  of  the  world." 

So  far  as  the  budget  of  1863  proposed  the  removal  of  a  part  of  the 
income  tax  and  the  duty  on  tea  it  commended  itself  to  the  House  and  the 
country.  If  the  men  of  large  incomes  were  in  a  frame  of  mind  to  applaud 
the  favor  to  their  interest  then  certainly  the  man  who  drank  tea  might 
applaud — he  and  his  family.  As  to  the  aristocratic  clubs  of  London  and 
other  great  cities,  they  raised  a  clamor,  after  their  manner,  against  that  part 
of  the  budo^et  which  recommended  a  license  to  each  club  for  the  sale  of 
liquors  in  the  same  manner  as  for  hotels  and  coffee  houses.  After  a  good 
deal  of  hot  discussion  in  the  House,  and  a  still  more  furious  uproar  among 
the  swells  of  the  clubhouses,  Gladstone  reluctantly  assented  to  the  with- 
drawal of  his  proposition. 

His  recommendation,  however,  to  tax  the  clubs  for  their  drinks,  or  for 
the  privilege  of  them,  was  by  no  means  the  occasion  of  so  great  odium  as 
was  the  recommendation  to  remove  the  exemption  of  charitable  donations 
from  the  reach  of  taxation.  This  might  well  provoke  an  outcry  and  wail 
throughout  the  kingdom.  While  the  budget  was  still  before  the  House 
there  came  up  a  tremendous  deputation,  headed  by  the  Archbishop  of  Can- 


342  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILTJAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

terbiiry,  the  Earl  of  Shaftesbury,  and  the  Duke  of  Cambridge,  to  intercede 
with  Mr.  Gladstone  on  the  score  of  the  impolicy  and  inhumanity  of  taxing 
the  endowments  of  charitable  institutions.  Certainly  the  chancellor  of  the 
exchequer  had  to  face  a  formidable  array.  He  might  well  have  been 
influenced  by  such  an  appeal  from  such  a  committee;  but  he  calmly  heard 
and  as  calmly  answered  the  delegation  that  their  representations  should  be 
properly  heard  by  the  House  of  Commons  and  the  country,  but  that  he 
should  state  to  the  House  the  grounds  upon  which  he  had  made  his  recom- 
mendation, and  then  leave  the  representatives  of  the  people  to  decide  the 
question  at  issue. 

It  appears  that  this  movement  against  what  Mr.  Gladstone  conceived 
to  be  a  measure  of  justice  aroused  him  to  the  point  of  strong  controversy 
with  his  adversaries.  He  went  into  the  House  of  Commons  and  defended 
his  measure  with  great  vehemence  and  ability.  He  said  that  he  knew  well 
how  his  proposition  had  been  received  and  that  he  fully  appreciated  the 
outcry  that  had  been  raised  against  him.  He  believed  the  measure  to  be 
wise  and  prudent,  and  was  little  disposed  to  recede  from  his  position,  but 
was  willing. to  accept  the  adverse  judgment  of  the  Commons  if  such  judg- 
ment should  come.  He  was  sure  that  there  was  a  misapprehension  as  to  the 
intent  of  the  measure  which  he  had  recommended.  What  was  the  exemp- 
tion which  he  wished  to  have  removed  }  He  assured  the  House  that  nineteen 
twentieths  of  the  charitable  endowments  to  which  his  measure  was  directed 
were  deathbed  bequests  made  by  the  rich  as  memorials  of  themselves,  in  the 
hour  of  their  going  forth,  with  a  view  to  exempting  their  posthumous  estate 
from  the  equitable  burdens  of  taxation. 

Why  should  the  privilege  be  thus  extended  to  a  man  to  immortalize 
himself  as  the  founder  of  a  charity,  under  a  system  that  gave  him  the  power 
thus  to  withdraw  his  property  in  toto  from  the  common  provision  of  prop- 
erty, namely,  that  it  should  be  taxed  for  the  public  good  }  He  showed  that 
the  actual  loss  to  the  revenues  on  the  score  of  this  exemption  was  two  hun- 
dred and  sixteen  thousand  pounds  a  year.  Besides  this  it  cost  the  govern- 
ment forty-five  thousand  pounds  annually  to  administer  properly  on  the 
bequests  thus  made  to  charities.  He  was  sure  that  the  whole  loss  to  the 
treasury  of  England  by  this  memorial  business  was  hardly  less  than  a  half  a 
million  pounds  annually.  He  then  proceeded  to  classify  the  charitable 
endowments,  dividing  them  into  three  groups,  according  to  their  magnitude. 
He  showed  that  in  the  group  embracing  the  small  charities  there  was 
scarcely  a  trace  of  virtue  or  efficiency.  On  three  separate  occasions  the 
condition  of  these  charities  had  been  investigated  and  adversely  reported  by 
commissioners  sent  out  by  the  House  of  Commons.  It  had  been  proved 
conclusively  that  the  tendency  of  such  institutions  was  to  convert  thousands 
of  people  into  paupers  and  to  reclaim  none.     The  tendency  was  to  weaken 


OTHER    BUDGETS    OF    THE    I'ALMERSTON    REGIME.  343 

poor  people  on  the  border  line  of  want,  to  destroy  their  independence,  and 
to  make  them  beggars. 

In  the  middle  group  Mr.  Gladstone  put  those  charitable  endowments  of 
which  the  proceeds  were  distributed  in  money.  He  called  attention  of 
the  House  to  the  abuses  which  arose,  full  fledged  and  naturally,  out  of  such 
provisions.  Finally  he  showed  that  the  great  charities  endowed  in  the  man- 
ner above  described  were  set  up  for  the  benefit  and  glory  of  their  patrons 
rather  than  for  the  relief  and  promotion  of  those  to  whom  the  proceeds  were 
said  to  be  directed.  He  declared  that  he  had  not  recommended  the  removal 
of  the  exemption  of  the  endowed  charities  because  the  treasury  had  need  of 
such  a  measure,  but  he  had  made  the  recommendation  because  justice 
demanded  it.  He  would  not  revert  to  the  clamor  which  had  been  raised 
outside,  to  the  animadversions  which  had  been  indiscreetly  and  unjustly 
applied  to  the  recommendation  he  had  had  the  honor  to  offer.  Nor  was 
he  the  originator  of  the  project  to  make  the  endowed  charities  bear  their 
part  of  the  public  burden.  A  former  chancellor  of  the  exchequer  (meaning 
Sir  George  Cornewall  Lewis)  had  supported  and  promoted  a  like  measure. 
"  We  do  not,"  said  Mr.  Gladstone,  "  presume  as  a  government  by  any  means 
which  a  government  might  dream  of  to  press  it  [the  above  recommenda- 
tion] on  an  adverse  House.  The  House  is  responsible  ;  we  do  not  wish  to 
show  undue  obstinacy  ;  we  defer  to  its  opinions  ;  we  reserve  to  ourselves 
the  power  of  deciding  upon  the  way  in  which  this  question  is  at  a  future 
time  to  be  considered.  We  have  proposed  this  measure  to  the  House  as 
consistent  with  every  principle  which  has  governed  administration  for 
the  last  twenty  years;  as  being  just  to  the  taxed  community  and  fair  to  the 
laboring  poor ;  favorable  to  the  great  object  of  elevating  their  character  as 
well  as  of  improving  their  condition.  In  proposing  this  measure  we  feel 
ourselves  impregnable  and  invulnerable  to  all  rude  reproaches,,  and  we  rec- 
ommend it  to  the  courage,  the  wisdom,  and  the  justice  of  the  House  of 
Commons." 

There  could  not  be  much  doubt  of  the  general  truth,  the  substantial 
correctness,  of  -this  argument ;  but  in  the  political  world  the  naked  truth 
rarely  prevails  in  a  contest  with  expediency.  Many  members  of  the  House 
of  Commons,  who  understood  well  enough  the  essentialjustice  of  Mr.  Glad- 
stone's recommendation,  quailed  before  the  outcry  which  they  knew  would 
be  raised  against  the  promotion  and  the  promoters  of  such  a  measure. 
They  perceived  that  they  who  should  vote  against  it,  whatever  might  be 
their  convictions,  would  get  themselves  armed  with  clubs  and  swords  against 
those  who  favored  the  proposition  pending.  So  with  the  progress  of  debate 
and  the  elevation  of  expediency,  Mr.  Gladstone,  though  upheld  by  the  cab- 
inet and  defended  in  particular  by  Lord  Palmerston,  decided  to  withdraw — 
and  did  withdraw — his  measure  from  further  consideration. 


344  lAFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

No  further,  however,  could  the  chancellor  of  the  exchequer  be  driven. 
There  were  those  who  believed  and  hoped  that  the  remission  proposed  in 
the  income  tax  might  be  carried  further.  Among  these  was  Mr.  Hubbard, 
who  presently  moved,  "That  the  incidence  of  an  income  tax  touching  the 
products  of  invested  property  should  fall  upon  net  income,  and  that  the  net 
amounts  of  industrial  earnings  should,  previous  to  assessment,  be  subject  to 
such  an  abatement  as  may  equitably  adjust  the  burden  thrown  upon  intelli- 
gence and  skill  as  compared  with  property."  Mr.  Hubbard  was  not  alone 
in  his  advocacy  of  the  views  expressed  in  his  resolution  ;  but  the  chancellor 
of  the  exchequer  declared  that  the  method  suggested  by  the  mover  of  the 
resolution  was  only  a  shift  and  a  substitution,  which,  if  conceded,  would  work 
out  no  beneficial  results. 

He  then  informed  the  House  that  the  committee  of  which  Mr.  Hub- 
bard was  a  member  had  rejected  this  very  proposition  and  that  the  House 
had  passed  the  same  judgment  upon  it  at  the  previous  session.  He  demon- 
strated that  those  who  were  to  be  favored  by  the  resolution  just  offered  were 
precisely  those  who,  on  account  of  the  rapid  increase  in  their  fortunes,  were 
least  needful  and  deserving  of  an  advantage.  On  the  other  hand,  those  who 
were  really  in  need  of  favor  under  the  provisions  of  the  income  tax  were 
not  touched  by  Mr.  Hubbard's  resolution.  The  speaker  admitted  that  there 
was  a  sentiment  quite  natural  in  its  origin  favorable  to  such  a  motion  as 
that  proposed  ;  but  it  was  not  practicable  to  put  such  a  sentiment  into  law. 
Abstract  principles  could  not  often  be  brought  into  the  statute  for  the  prac- 
tical relief  of  the  public.  Thus  the  debate  ended,  and  the  resolution  was 
rejected. 

At  this  session  of  the  House  was  introduced  a  measure  called  The 
Dissenters'  Burials  Bill.  The  resolution  proposed  to  give  to  Nonconform- 
ists the  right  of  performing  their  funerals  with  the  ceremonies  and  services 
of  their  own  religion  and  by  ministers  of  their  own  faith,  but  in  the  ceme- 
teries of  the  Established  Church.  The  proposed  bill  was  offered  by  Sir 
Morton  Peto,  and  brought  out  in  full  heat  the  hostility  of  the  opposition. 
Speeches  were  made  by  Mr.  Disraeli  and  by  Lord  Robert  Cecil,  afterward 
Earl  of  Salisbury.  Mr.  Gladstone  gave  a  qualified  indorsement  to  the  pro- 
posed measure,  saying  that  he  could  not  see  any  sufficient  reason,  or  indeed 
any  reason  at  all,  why,  after  having  granted,  and  most  properly  granted,  to 
the  entire  community  the  power  of  professing  and  practicing  what  form  of 
religion  they  pleased  during  life.  Parliament  should  say  to  them,  or  to  their 
relatives,  when  they  were  dead,  "  We  will  at  the  last  lay  our  hands  upon 
you  and  not  permit  you  to  enjoy  the  privilege  of  being  buried  in  the  church- 
yard, where,  perhaps,  the  ashes  of  your  ancestors  repose,  or,  at  any  rate,  in 
the  place  of  which  you  are  parishioners,  unless  you  appear  there  as  mem- 
bers of  the  Church  of  England,  and,  as  members  of  that  Church,  have  her 


OTHER    BUDGETS    OF    THE    PALMERSTON    REGIME.  345 

service  read  over  your  remains."  "That,"  said  Mr.  Gladstone,  "  appears  to 
me  an  inconsistency  and  an  anomaly  in  the  present  state  of  the  law,  and  is 
in  the  nature  of  a  grievance." 

To  the  American  reader  this  argument  is  so  obvious  that  he  cannot 
well  understand  that  it  should  have  been  objectionable  in  England.  But  so 
strongly  was  the  England  of  the  first  years  of  the  seventh  decade  wedded 
to  her  Church  Establishment  that  anything  which  seemed  to  intimate  an 
abatement  of  her  rights  and  prerogatives  was  resisted  and  resented.  Mr. 
Gladstone's  view  was  such  an  intimation.  It  was  not  indorsed  by  the  gov- 
ernment, and  the  resolution  of  Sir  Morton  Peto  was  rejected  by  a  large 
majority. 

We  may  here  refer  to  one  other  measure  of  importance  which  was 
debated  at  the  same  session  of  Parliament.  It  had  been  determined  to  pro- 
mote with  governmental  support  the  International  Exhibition  at  South  Ken- 
sington. The  House  of  Commons  took  up  the  measure  with  considerable 
enthusiasm  and  made  an  appropriation  of  a  hundred  and  twenty-three  thou- 
sand pounds  for  the  purchase  of  the  grounds  necessary  as  a  site  for  the 
exhibition  buildings.  In  the  next  place  a  proposition  was  introduced  for  an 
appropriation  to  purchase  and  retain  the  building  itself  Mr.  Gladstone, 
actine  for  the  ofovernment  in  the  absence  of  Lord  Palmerston,  who  was  now 
rapidly  approaching  the  end  of  his  days,  proposed  a  resolution  for  the  pur- 
pose mentioned. 

The  measure  included  an  appropriation  of  a  hundred  and  five  thousand 
pounds  for  the  purchase  of  the  buildings  at  Kensington  and  for  making  in 
them  certain  alterations.  He  told  the  House  that  the  proposition  was  to 
be  regarded  as  an  item  of  business.  He  thought  that  the  present  appropri- 
ation logically  followed  the  one  recently  voted  for  the  purchase  of  grounds. 
It  would  be  illogical,  after  purchasing  the  grounds,  not  to  make  provision 
for  the  requisite  building.  He  said  that  the  government  had  already  offered 
eighty  thousand  pounds  to  certain  contractors  for  the  work  contemplated. 
The  bill  provided  for  an  additional  twenty-five  thousand  pounds  to  keep  the 
buildings  in  repair  and  for  completing  them.  The  public  wants  ks  it  respected 
the  building  were  to  provide  a  national  portrait  gallery,  a  patent  museum, 
and  a  hall  of  natural  history  for  the  collections  of  the  British  Museum. 

These  propositions  seemed  obvious  enough,  but  for  some  reason  a  whirl 
of  opposition  came  on  in  the  House,  amounting  to  an  uproar.  From  the 
American  point  of  view  it  would  appear  that  the  members  came  all  at  once 
to  suspect  that  there  was  a  job  lurking  in  the  measure  before  the  House. 
Some  of  the  leaders  of  the  opposition  rather  generously  sought  to  support 
the  ministerial  proposition,  but  the  effort  was  futile.  The  prejudice  of  the 
House  roseso  high  that  Mr.  Gladstone's  resolution,  although  emanating  from 
the  government,  was  voted  down  by  a  large  majority. 


346  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

By  the  close  of  the  year  1863  the  premonitions  might  be  seen  of  great 
changes  that  were  impending  in  the  party  hfe  of  Great  Britain.  The 
government  still  seemed  to  hold  the  confidence  of  the  majority;  but  that  it 
was  growing  old  could  not  well  be  denied.  Perhaps  the  ministers  no  longer 
concealed  from  themselves  the  fatal  truth  that  their  days  in  office  were 
numbered.  If  there  could  be  any  exception  to  this  general  apprehension  of 
the  evil  to  come  it  was  in  the  case  of  Mr.  Gladstone,  who  by  this  date  had  * 
become  by  far  the  tallest  member  of  the  ministerial  order.  He  was  so 
regarded  in  governmental  circles  and  among  the  opposition.  The  ster- 
ling qualities  of  his  character  were  now  recognized  by  all,  and  time  and  cir- 
cumstance seemed  to  conspire  in  ratifying  his  methods  and  policies  as  a 
statesman.  His  financial  management  had  been  superb.  The  year  1864 
came  in  under  favorable  auspices.  Financial  and  commercial  prosperity  had- 
returned.  The  trade  of  the  nation  had  gone  forward  with  rapid  strides. 
The  expenses  of  the  government  had  fallen  below  and  the  revenues  above 
the  estimates  of  the  chancellor  of  the  exchequer,  insomuch  that  the  chief 
question  arising  in  the  finance  office  was  how  to  dispose  of  the  surplus. 

It  was  on  the  7th  of  April,  1864,  that  Mr.  Gladstone  brought  forward 
his  budget  for  that  year.  The  document  was  in  the  same  manner  as  its  pre- 
decessors. The  same  intense  interest  was  manifested  in  the  budget  and  in 
the  explication  thereof  by  its  author.  His  friends  were  disposed  to  believe 
that  the  public  enthusiasm  relative  to  the  formal  appearance  of  the  chan- 
cellor of  the  exchequer  in  this  year  was  greater  than  ever  before.  It  may 
not  be  doubted  that  he  himself  came  to  the  task  of  the  day  in  full  confi- 
dence and  with  a  proud  sense  of  the  showing  which  he  was  able  to  make 
in  the  finances  of  the  richest  government  ever  created  by  man. 

Mr.  Gladstone  began  his  financial  oration  by  calling  attention  to  the 
previous  condition  of  the  country.  He  spoke  of  the  years  of  hardship  that 
had  just  gone  before,  of  the  failure  of  the  crops,  of  the  suffering  in  the  agri- 
cultural districts  of  Ireland  and  in  the  manufacturing  districts  of  England. 
This,  he  was  glad  to  say,  had  in  great  measure  passed  away.  The  condition 
of  the  country  had  improved  in  a  marked  degree.  The  improvement  in 
the  finances  was  conspicuously  gratifying.  The  expenditures  for  the  fiscal 
year  had  been  sixty-seven  million  fifty-six  thousand  pounds,  being  less  by  a 
million  and  a  quarter  than  had  been  estimated  and  provided  for  by  Parlia- 
ment. The  revenue  had  risen  above  the  estimate,  amounting  to  seventy 
million  and  three  thousand  pounds.  There  was  thus  a  surplus  of  three  mil- 
lion pounds  in  round  numbers.  Even  after  deducting  the  heavy  expense  of 
improving  the  fortifications  of  the  kingdom  there  was  a  surplus  of  more 
than  two  million  pounds. 

Within  three  years,  the  chancellor  said,  there  had  been  a  saving  to  the 
taxpayers  of  England  of  more  than  six  and  a  half  million  pounds.     The 


OTHER    BUDGETS    OF    THE    PALMERSTON    REGIME.  347 

falling  off  in  the  revenue  from  the  abolition  of  duties  had  been  only  one 
million  seven  hundred  and  sixty  thousand  pounds.  He  was  thus  able  to 
show  an  aggregate  saving  to  the  people  of  Great  Britain  of  about  five  mil- 
lion pounds.  For  ten  years  past  the  revenues  had  been  increasing  at  the 
average  rate  of  more  than  a  million  a  year.  The  government  had  been 
able  to  turn  its  attention  to  the  payment  of  the  national  debt.  In  the  past 
eight  years  the  debt  had  been  decreased  by  sixty-nine  million  pounds.  The 
management  had  been  such  as  to  reduce  the  annual  interest  by  about  six 
million  pounds.  Recently  the  treasury  had  taken  up  and  canceled  a  mil- 
lion of  exchequer  bonds.  There  had  also  been  paid  out  over  a  million  in 
discharge  of  what  were  called  the  terminable  annuities. 

Mr.  Gladstone  next  turned  to  the  topics  of  the  imports  and  exports 
of  the  nation.  These  showed  for  the  year  an  aggregate  of  nearly  four 
hundred  and  forty-five  million  pounds.  The  exports  for  the  preceding  year 
were  a  hundred  and  ninety-five  million  pounds.  The  speaker  pointed  out 
the  fact  that  the  commercial  transactions  of  the  nation  thus  amounted  to 
nearly  a  million  and  a  half  pounds  for  each  working  day  of  the  year.  These 
totals  of  trade  were  so  greatly  in  excess  of  anything  hitherto  known  in  the 
history  of  Great  Britain  as  to  point  unmistakably  to  the  new  commercial 
policy  of  free  trade  as  the  source  of  the  vast  augmentation  of  British  com- 
merce.    The  same  fact  indicated  the  general  prosperity  of  England. 

At  one  point  Mr.  Gladstone  seemed  to  be  hard  pressed  in  holding  his 
position.  The  statistics  showed  that  the  importation  of  foreign  paper  had 
increased  enormously  since  the  reduction  in  duty  on  that  commodity.  It 
looked  as  though  the  argument  made  on  the  rag  question  by  his  opponents 
at  the  previous  session  of  Parliament  were  about  to  be  established  by  facts, 
but  Mr.  Gladstone  denied  that  the  increase  in  the  importation  of  paper, 
though  very  great,  had  been  attended  with  a  corresponding  decrease  in  the 
paper  manufacture  of  Great  Britain.  That,  he  contended,  was  not  in  evi- 
dence. He  could  show,  moreover,  that  there  had  been  a  great  increase  in 
the  demand  for  the  raw  material  of  paper,  and  also  that  British  paper  was 
exported  in  large  quantities  ;  also  that  the  price  of  paper  had  fallen  even 
below  the  figures  indicated  in  his  estimate  ;  also  that  the  recent  law  had 
prevented  the  further  diminution  in  the  number  of  paper  makers  in  Eng- 
land ;  also  that  the  cost  of  making  paper  had  been  reduced — and  that, 
therefore,  taken  all  in  all,  the  abolition  of  the  paper  duty  had  worked  the 
same  salutary  results  which  had  been  reached  in  all  other  departments  by 
the  removal  of  the  restrictions  on  trade.  Finally  he  informed  the  House 
that  France  was  moving  in  the  proper  direction  with  a  proposed  reduction 
or  abolition  of  the  duty  on  rags.  This  done,  the  equipoise  of  trade  in 
paper  would  be  perfectly  restored. 

As  to  the  duties  on  spirits,  the  revenue  from  that  source  had  increased 


348  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

by  more  than  eight  hundred  thousand  pounds.  At  the  same  time  the 
exportation  of  spirits  was  greater  than  hitherto.  The  benefit  in  this  direc- 
tion had  extended  to  a  social  and  moral  aspect  of  the  case.  There  was  a 
smaller  consumption  of  strong  liquors  and  a  greatly  increased  consumption 
of  wines  and  light  drinks.  More  wine  was  used  in  England  by  fifty-five 
per  cent  than  had  been  consumed  five  years  previously.  The  tobacco 
trade  had  improved.  As  between  England  and  France,  the  imports  from 
the  latter  country  had  increased  in  five  years  a  little  more  than  a  hundred 
per  cent,  while  the  exports  from  England  to  that  country  had  increased 
about  a  hundred  and  forty  per  cent.  Meanwhile  the  social  as  well  as  the 
industrial  and  commercial  condition  of  the  people  had  been  improving,  as 
was  clearly  shown  in  the  decrease  of  vagrancy  and  pauperism. 

Passing  to  the  present  and  the  future,  Mr.  Gladstone  next  gave  his 
estimates  for  the  fiscal  year  1864-65.  He  placed  the  revenue  at  sixty-nine 
million  four  hundred  and  sixty  thousand  pounds,  and  the  expenditure  at 
sixty-six  million  eight  hundred  and  ninety  thousand  pounds.  This  he 
thought  would  afford  the  treasury  for  the  next  year  a  net  surplus  of  about 
two  million  five  hundred  and  sixty  thousand  pounds.  This  suggested  a 
further  reduction  in  taxation  ;  that  is,  in  the  duties  on  articles  of  public 
consumption.  For  his  part  he  believed  that  sugar  was  the  next  commodity 
from  which  the  duty  should  be  removed.  He  thought  that  there  should  be 
a  scale  of  duties  adjusted  to  the  different  grades  of  sugar,  and  that  this 
should  be  arranged  in  a  manner  to  interfere  as  little  as  possible  with  the 
importers  and  dealers  in  the  article. 

On  the  whole  the  speaker  would  reduce  the  average  rate  on  sugar  by 
one  shilling  the  hundredweight.  This  would  diminish  the  revenue  by  about 
a  million  seven  hundred  thousand  pounds  ;  but  the  increase  in  the  sugar 
trade  would  be  such  as  to  make  the  diminution  about  a  million  three  hun- 
dred and  thirty  thousand  pounds.  The  remaining  surplus  of  a  million  two 
hundred  and  thirty  thousand  pounds  he  thought  pointed  to  a  further  reduc- 
tion in  the  income  tax.  It  might  be  suggested  that  the  duty  on  malt 
should  be  reduced  instead,  but  he  thought  otherwise.  He  should  recom- 
mend that  the  income  tax  be  subjected  to  a  further  reduction  of  one 
penny  the  pound.  From  this  source  the  revenue  would  be  reduced  for 
the  ensuing  year  by  about  eight  hundred  thousand  pounds,  and  for  the  fol- 
lowing year  by  a  million  two  hundred  thousand  pounds. 

The  last-named  reduction  would  still  leave  a  surplus  in  the  treasury  of 
four  hundred  and  thirty  thousand  pounds  for  the  year  1864-65.  As  against 
this  he  would  recommend  a  reduction  in  the  rate  of  fire  insurance  of  one 
half;  that  is,  from  three  shillings  to  one  shilling  sixpence  on  stock  in 
trade.  By  this  reduction  the  surplus,  he  thought,  would  be  cut  down  to 
about  two  hundred  and   thirty-eight  thousand  pounds — a  sum  which  the 


OTHER    BUDGETS    OF    THE    PALMERSTON    REGIME.  349 

chancellor  of  the  exchequer  reckoned  a  sufficient  balance  for  all  contin- 
gencies of  the  treasury. 

This  showing  of  the  finances  of  the  kingdom  was  excellent  as  it  related 
to  the  facts,  and  skillful  as  it  related  to  method.  Very  little  opposition  was 
provoked  on  the  different  parts  of  the  budget.  It  looked  as  though  the 
long-continued  battle  of  Mr.  Gladstone  for  the  establishment  of  a  rational 
and  consistent  policy  of  treasury  management  had  gone  completely  in  his 
favor.  The  usual  small  fire  of  formal  criticism  was  indulged  in,  but  without 
effect.  One  member  thought  that  the  reduction  of  the  rates  on  fire  insur- 
ance ought  to  be  greater,  but  the  House  did  not  agree  with  him.  When  it 
came  to  the  consideration  of  the  clause  relating  to  the  duties  on  sugar 
another  member  moved,  "  That  the  consideration  of  these  duties  be  post- 
poned until  the  House  has  had  an  opportunity  of  considering  the  expediency 
of  the  reduction  of  the  duty  upon  malt." 

Hereupon  a  little  debate  ensued,  springing  from  the  opposition,  among 
whom  there  was  a  notion  that  the  paper  duty  ought  to  be  restored.  This 
opinion,  however,  was  wholly  reactionary,  and  had  little  hold  in  the  senti- 
ment of  the  House.  Mr.  Gladstone  replied  firmly  that  the  abolition  of  the 
paper  tax  was  now  a  part  of  the  general  policy  that  could  not  be  reversed. 
He  would  point  the  House  to  the  splendid  results  which  had  followed  the 
abolition  of  the  said  tax  in  the  establishment  of  a  cheap  free  press  for  the 
people.  Besides,  the  mover  of  the  amendment  had  not  considered  that  the 
sum  of  the  surplus  reported  was  so  small  that  any  material  reduction  in  the 
duty  on  malt  would  engulf  it  ten  times  over.  Besides,  the  malt  tax  had 
immediate  relation  to  the  drinks  of  the  people,  and  if  the  tax  was  to  be 
tinkered  then  the  whole  question  of  the  taxes  on  spirituous  liquors  would 
have  to  be  opened  again.  The  objections  of  the  opposition  were  then  swept 
away  by  adverse  votes  of  the  House. 

At  this  juncture  Mr.  Gladstone  found  opportunity  to  conciliate  the  pro- 
ducers of  barley  somewhat  by  himself  adding  a  clause  to  the  effect  that  such 
malt  as  was  used  for  feeding  stock  should  be  exempt  from  the  duty.  This 
done,  members  of  the  opposition  next  assailed  the  sugar  schedule,  offering 
first  one  and  then  another  amendment  for  changing  the  rates  ;  but  these 
were  opposed  by  Mr.  Gladstone  in  brief  but  conclusive  arguments,  and  were 
adversely  voted  by  the  House. 

Another  matter  of  no  small  importance  was  the  proposition  of  the 
chancellor  of  the  exchequer  relative  to  the  law  for  the  purchase  of  govern- 
ment annuities  through  the  medium  of  the  postal  savings  banks.  He  offered 
an  amendment  to  enable  the  banks  referred  to,  under  auspices  of  the  gov- 
ernment, to  grant  policies  of  life  assurance.  The  object  of  the  measure  was 
to  extend  the  opportunities  for  assurance  to  the  poor  and  the  humble.  The 
companies  had  generally  offered  assurance  only  in  such  sums  as  to  put  the 


J50  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

advantage  beyond  the  reach  of  the  working  people.  The  mover  thought 
that  the  post-office  savings  banks,  which  had  now  been  extended  through- 
out the  kingdom,  under  a  measure  initiated  by  himself,  might  be  used  as  a 
sort  of  governmental  life  assurance  offices  for  the  poor.  Mr.  Gladstone  was 
of  opinion  that  the  measure  proposed  was  consistent  with  the  spirit  of 
British  legislation,  since  it  merely  afforded  to  humble  citizens  the  opportu- 
nity of  making  valuable  provision  for  themselves. 

Hereupon,  however,  an  opposition  arose,  blowing  strongly  over  the 
House.  The  objections  came  from  two  quarters.  In  the  first  place,  it  was 
urged  that  the  pending  measure  was  a  kind  of  paternalism — a  sort  of  method 
of  taking  care  of  the  English  people,  as  though  they  were  infants.  The 
other  objections  arose  from  the  existing  assurance  companies  designated  in 
England  as  "  Friendly  Societies."  To  these  the  measure  seemed  dangerous; 
for  it  might  take  away  a  portion  of  their  trade  and  profits!  Their  cry  was 
in  the  usual  tone  that  Diana  of  the  Ephesians  is  great. 

For  the  time  it  looked  as  though  Mr.  Gladstone  might  be  forced  to 
recede  ;  but  in  his  reply  to  the  objections  and  objectors  he  was  able  to 
declare  that  never  before  in  his  public  life  had  he  received  so  many  letters 
of  approval  and  commendation  relative  to  any  single  measure  that  he  had 
had  the  honor  to  propose  in  the  House  of  Commons  as  he  had  recently 
received  indorsing  the  project  under  consideration.  This  kind  of  argument 
generally  prevails  in  that  body ;  for,  say  wdiat  we  will  of  the  British  Parlia- 
ment, it  is  an  instrument  that  vibrates  most  sensitively  to  the  public  breeze 
of  the  nation. 

Oddly  enough,  in  the  matter  now  under  contention,  the  House  of  Lords 
concurred  in  the  Gladstonian  measure  ;  for  to  the  members  of  that  august 
body  the  proposal  to  assure  the  lives  of  the  common  people,  as  if  under 
governmental  patronage,  seemed  to  accord  perfectly  with  the  theory  of  the 
Lords  about  the  nature  of  government  in  general.  Mr.  Gladstone  was 
able  to  carry  through  his  measure,  and  indeed  to  secure  the  approval  of  the 
whole  budget  of  1864,  with  the  exception  only  of  such  modifications  as  he 
himself  chose  to  suggest  and  promote. 


PROGRESS    TOWARD    LIBERALISM,    AND    REJECTION    BY    OXFORD.  35 1 


CHAPTER  XX. 
Progress  toward  Liberalism,  and  Rejection  by  Oxford. 
E  here  arrive  at  the   beginning  of  ^^  great  ,u]^lij(eaval^in  ^British 


poHtics,  in  which  Win i am  E.  Glad^:^Jie,,  was  both ^  cause:-^,and 
effect.  He  may  be  regarded  as  the  prifne  mover,  or  one  of  the 
prime  movers,  of  a  great  agitation,,  on  the  ..wave  of  which  he 
was  destined  to  rise  to  the  acme  of  his  influence  ..and,  fame.  The 
preHminary  swirl  of  the  storm  that  was  to  come  seems,  to  .have  occurred  on 
the  iith  of  May,  1864.  A  measure  had  been  introduced  into  the  House  b)' 
Mr.  Baines  to  lower  the  parliamentary  franchise  in  boroughs  ;  that  is,  to 
extend  the  franchise  to  new  classes  of  the  common  people.  The  bill  came 
to  its  second  reading,  to  which  it  failed  to  pass  ;  but  the  majority  against  it 


was  not  great. 


Mr.  Gladstone  made  a  speech  on  this  occasion  which  may  be  regarded 
as  the  opening  of  the  dike  through  which  the  floods  of. a  .political  revolu- 
tion were  destined  to  rush  in.  While  he  did  inot.^positiyely' advocate  the 
adoption  of  the  resolution  proposed  by  Baines.  he  nevertheless. concurred  in 
the  general  view  that  there  ought  to  be  a  considerable  extension  of  the  fran- 
chise to  the  workinof  classes  of  the  nation.  He  !was  unwillino;  to.  advocate 
a  measure  of  wholesale  suffrapfe  thrown  broadcast  to  the.  laboring  men,  but 
he  did  advocate  an  enlargement  of  the  franchise  in  that  direction.  He  said 
that  the  right  of  suffrage  under  the  present  system  hardly  reached  the 
working  classes  at  all ;  the  great  mass  were  disfranchised,  and  this  ought 
not  to  be. 

Then  Mr.  Gladstone  broke  into  the  remarkable  part  of  his  speech. 
He  replied  vigorously  to  the'  assertion  that  the  working  classes  were  not 
themselves  moving  for  the  right  of  suffrage;  that  they  were  not  agitating 
the  question  of  their  right  to  vote.  He  inquired  whether  it  was  a  true 
policy  for  the  British  Parliament  to  wait  foran  agitation  among  the  working 
classes  before  undertaking  the  duty  of  reform.  "  In  my  opinion,"  said  Mr. 
Gladstone,  "  agitation  by  the  working  classes  upon  any  political  subject 
whatever  is  a  thing  not  to  be  waited  for,  not  to  be  made  a  condition  pre- 
vious to  any  parliamentary  movement,  but,  on  the  contrary,  is  to  be  depre- 
cated, and,  if  possible,  prevented  by  wise  and  provident  measures.  An 
agitation  by  the  working  classes  is  not  like  an  agitation  by  the  classes  above 
them  having  leisure.  The  agitation  of  the  classes  having  leisure  is  easily 
conducted.  Every  hour  of  their  time  has  not  a  money  value  ;  their  wives 
and  children  are  not  dependent  on  the  application  of  those  hours  to  labor. 
When  a  workingman  finds  himself  in  such  a  condition  that  he  must  abandon 
that  daily  labor  on  which  he  is  strictly  dependent   for  his  daily  bread,  it  is 


352 


LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 


only  because  then,  in  railway  language,  the  danger  signal  is  turned  on,  and 
because  he  feels  a  strong  necessity  for  action  and  a  distrust  of  the  rulers 
who   have  driven    him    to   that   necessity.     The  present  state    of  things,  I 

rejoice  to  say,  does  not  indicate  that 
distrust ;  but  if  we  admit  that  we  must 
not  allege  the  absence  of  agitation  on 
the  part  of  the  working  classes  as  a 
reason  why  the  Parliament  of  Eng- 
land and  the  public  mind  of  England 
should  be  indisposed  to  entertain  the 
discussion  of  the  question. 

To  the  American  reader  this  speech 
would  seem  to  be  mildly  conservative 
on  the  question  of  suffrage.  That  it 
should,  as  late  as  the  middle  of  the 
seventh  decade,  be  regarded  in  any  civil- 
ized country  as  a  radical  challenge  to 
the  existing  order  appears  from  our  point 
of  view  an  astonishing,  if  not  an  absurd, 
proposition.  So  also  of  the  rest  of  the 
speech,  which  was  in  the  same  tenor. 
He  showed  that  the  middle  classes  in 
England  are  not  divided  from  those 
below  them  by  any  well-marked  line  of 
virtue  or  capacity,  such  as  might  indi- 
cate the  riorht  of  suffraee  to  them  and  the  withholdinor  of  it  from  their 
humbler  neighbors.  He  favored  the  enlargement  of  the  franchise  as  a 
measure  calculated  indeed  to  obliterate  somewhat  the  artificial  lines  in  Brit- 
ish society,  and  to  promote  that  social  and  civil  unity  of  the  English  people 
as  a  whole  which  he  was  glad  to  say  was  indicated  by  the  signs  of  the  times 
and  the  progress  of  humanity. 

Had  this  argument  of  Mr.  Gladstone,  relating  wholly  to  secular  reform, 
been  the  sum  of  his  offending  the  probabilities  are  that  he  would  have 
remained  in  virtually  the  same  relations  as  hitherto  with  the  existing  politi- 
cal parties.  But  he  presently  went  further  in  a  matter  relating  to  the 
Church.  On  that  side  also  he  veered  away  from  the  opinions  held  by  his 
constituents  of  Oxford  University,  and,  as  we  shall  presently  see,  alienated 
a  majority  of  them  from  his  support. 

In  the  meantime  other  questions  arose  that,  for  the  present,  postponed 
the  break  between  the  chancellor  of  the  exchequer  and  his  old  party  associ- 
ates. All  along  a  strong  tide  of  opposition  had  beaten  against  the  govern- 
ment of  Lord  Palmerston  on  the  score  of  his  foreign  policy.     For  years  it 


GLADSTONE    IN    1864,    AGE    FIFTY-FIVE. 


PROGRESS    TOWARD    LIBERALISM,    AND    REJECTION    BY    OXFORD.  353 

had  been  alleged  that  that  statesman  with  respect  to  the  imperial  rdgiTne  in 
France  was  a  toady.  To  this  offense  he  was  said  to  have  added  many  an 
odious  favor  to  the  revolutionary  party  existing  widely  in  other  European 
nations. 

At  this  particular  juncture  Germany  had  summoned  Denmark  to  give 
up  Schleswig-Holstein  to  the  military  occupation  of  Prussia  and  Austria, 
until  what  time  the  claims  of  the  Duke  of  Augustenburg  might  be  settled. 
Driven  to  close  quarters,  the  Danish  government  appealed  to  England  and 
France  for  support,  and  received  from  those  governments  what  the  Danes 
thought  were  sufficient  assurances,  and  war  was  declared  against  Germany ; 
but  the  war  was  not  successful.  The  line  of  the  Dannewerk  was  taken  by 
the  enemy,  and  the  Danes  in  panic  found  that  the  expected  backing  of  Eng- 
land and  France  was  not  in  evidence.  They  rallied,  however,  in  a  splendid 
manner,  but  could  not  stand  against  the  overwhelming  power  of  the  Ger- 
mans. They  were  obliged  to  accept  such  terms  as  were  meted  out  to  them 
by  the  peace  of  Vienna,  concluded  in  October  of  1864.  For  awhile  Europe 
waited  for  Prussia  to  render  back  North  Schleswig  and  the  island  of  Alsen 
to  Denmark,  and  when  this  was  not  done,  as  Austria  had  demanded,  the 
break  came  between  that  power  and  Prussia,  so  lately  in  alliance,  in  the 
great  conflict  of  1866,  ending  in  the  humiliation  of  Austria  and  in  the  begin- 
ning of  the  ascendency  of  Prussia  and  the  house  of  Hohenzollern. 

The  course  of  Great  Britain  toward  Denmark  in  this  emergency  gave 
opportunity  to  the  opposition  in  Parliament  to  challenge  the  ministerial 
management.  On  the  4th  of  July,  1864,  Benjamin  Disraeli  offered  a  resolu- 
tion, "  To  thank  her  majesty  for  having  directed  the  correspondence  on 
Denmark  and  Germany,  and  the  protocol  of  the  conference  recently 
assembled  in  London  to  be  laid  before  Parliament;  to  assure  her  majesty 
that  we  have  heard  with  deep  concern  that  the  sittings  of  the  conference 
have  been  brought  to  a  close  without  accomplishing  the  important  purpose 
for  which  it  was  convened  ;  and  to  express  to  her  majesty  our  great  regret 
that,  while  the  course  pursued  by  her  majesty's  government  has  failed  to 
maintain  their  avowed  policy  of  upholding  the  integrity  and  independence 
of  Denmark,  it  has  lowered  the  just  influence  of  this  country  in  the  capitals 
of  Europe,  and  thereby  diminished  the  securities  for  peace." 

He  who  ran  might  read  that  Mr.  Disraeli  in  this  resolution  intended  in 
a  covert  way  to  carry  if  possible  a  vote  of  want  of  confidence  in  the  minis- 
try through  the  House  of  Commons.  As  soon  as  the  resolution  was  before 
the  House  Mr.  Alexander  W.  Kinglake  offered  an  amendment  or  substitute 
for  the  last  clause  of  Disraeli's  propositions,  as  follows  :  "  To  express  the 
satisfaction  with  which  we  have  learned  that  at  this  conjuncture  her  majesty 
has  been  advised  to  abstain  froni  armed  interference  in  the  war  now  going 
on  between  Denmark  and  the  German  powers."  The  presentation  of  this 
23 


354  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

amendment  made  a  sharp  issue,  and  Mr.  Disraeli  came  with  great  spirit  and 
wit  to  the  support  of  the  resoKition,  declaring  that  forbearance  had  ceased 
to  be  a  virtue,  and  that  a  crisis  was  now  on  in  which  the  orovernment  miaht 
not  any  longer  evade  their  responsibility  to  the  crown  and  to  the  nation. 

This  situation  was  well  calculated  to  bring  into  combat  the  two  great 
statesmen  who  were  destined  for  so  many  years  to  divide  the  admira- 
tion of  their  countrymen.  Mr.  Gladstone  went  into  the  arena  with  more 
than  his  usual  spirit.  He  declared  that  never  before  had  the  British  House 
of  Commons  been  asked  to  degrade  the  country  in  the  hope  of  overthrow- 
ing a  government !  He  wished  to  know  why  the  right  honorable  gentleman 
(Mr.  Disraeli)  had  not  come  plainly  and  openly  to  the  charge.  The  resolu- 
tion before  the  House  was  a  subterfuge.  The  mover  was  aiming  to  accom- 
plish one  end  by  promoting  another  end,  and  that  other  end  was  the  affixing 
of  a  stigma  on  Great  Britain.  The  resolution  before  the  House  read  as 
though  it  might  have  been  composed  in  the  office  of  an  obscure  newspaper 
in  Germany  !  Certainly  the  inspiration  of  it  had  come  from  that  remote  and 
disreputable  source.  Why  should  not  the  right  honorable  gentleman  adopt 
the  lanofuaee  of  the  British  forefathers,  who,  when  dissatisfied  with  a  eovern- 
ment,  said  so  in  unambiguous  language  ?  The  fathers  were  wont  in  such  cases 
to  address  the  crown  and  to  pray  that  the  offending  government  might  be 
dismissed.  "  They  said  boldly,"  the  speaker  continued,  "that  the  conduct  of 
the  government  was  open  to  such  and  such  charges,  and  they  prayed  that 
other  men  might  be  put  in  their  places.  But  the  right  honorable  gentleman 
was  afraid  to  raise  that  issue.  He  has,  indeed,  plucked  up  courage  to  pro- 
pose this  motion  ;  but  why  has  he  not  done  it  in  the  proper  constitutional 
form  in  which  votes  of  want  of  confidence  have  hitherto  been  drawn  }  Never 
before,  as  far  as  I  know,  has  party  spirit  led  gentlemen  in  this  country 
to  frame  a  motion  which  places  on  record  that  which  must  be  regarded  as 
dishonorable  to  the  nation.  I  go  back  to  the  time  of  Sir  R.  Walpole, 
of  Lord  North,  and  Mr.  Fox,  but  nowhere  do  we  find  such  a  sterile  and 
jejune  affair  as  this  resolution.  Those  charges  were  written  in  legible  and 
plain  terms  ;  but  the  right  honorable  gentleman  substitutes  language  which 
might  indeed  be  sufficient  for  the  purpose  of  rendering  it  impossible  for  the 
government  to  continue  in  office,  but  which  cannot  transfix  them  without  its 
sting  first  passing  through  the  honor  of  England.  For  the  reasons  I  have 
stated  I  look  forward  with  cheerfulness  to  the  issue  which  has  been  raised 
with  regard  to  our  conduct.  Nay,  more,  I  feel  the  most  confident  anticipa- 
tion that  both  the  House  and  the  country  will  approve  of  the  course  taken 
in  this  difficult  negotiation  by  her  majesty's  government,  and  that  they  will 
reject  a  motion  which  both  prudence  and  patriotism  must  alike  emphatically 
condemn." 

The  issue  thus  sharply  made  up  was  further  debated  by  several  mem- 


PROGRESS    TOWARD    LIBERALISM,    AND    REJECTION    BY    OXFORD.  355 

bers.  Among  those  may  be  mentioned  Mr,  Bernal  Osborne,  who  spoke  with 
much  wit  against  the  government.  The  British  cabinet,  he  said,  seemed  to 
him  much  hke  a  museum  of  curiosities.  In  it  there  were  birds  of  many 
plumages,  some  rare  and  some  noble;  some  alive  and  some  stuffed  !  There 
was  a  breed  or  two  that  had  been  preserved  with  the  greatest  difficulty — one 
in  particular  that  had  to  be  crossed  with  the  genus  Peelite !  The  speaker, 
however,  would  do  the  cabinet  the  justice  to  say  that  there  was  one  great 
and  able  minister  in  the  body,  namely,  the  chancellor  of  the  exchequer  ;  to 
him  and  to  him  alone  it  was  that  the  government  owed  "the  little  popularity 
and  the  little  support  that  they  get  from  this  Liberal  party." 

If  the  speaker  made  an  exception  complimentary  to  Mr.  Gladstone  he 
did  not  except  Mr.  Milner  Gibson,  whom  he  described  as  being  a  fly  in 
amber,  and  then  declared  his  astonishment  over  the  problem  of  how  the  devil 
he  got  there!  And  so  on  and  on  through  the perstjiage  of  the  hour.  When 
the  matter  came  to  the  issue  of  a  vote  the  Disraeli  resolution  was  rejected 
and  the  amendment  of  Mr.  Kinglake  adopted  by  a  majority  of  eighteen, 
that  vote  being  a  tolerable  test  of  the  existing  ministerial  strength. 

In  the  following  spring,  namely,  in  March  of  1865,  a  resolution  was 
offered  in  the  House  by  Mr.  Dillwyn  to  this  effect:  "That  the  present 
position  of  the  Irish  Church  Establishment  is  unsatisfactory  and  calls  for 
the  early  attention  of  her  majesty's  government."  These  were  ominous 
words.  They  were  the  foreshining  of  a  great  issue  that  could  be  settled  in 
only  one  way.  The  author  of  the  resolution  was  a  member  of  the  opposi- 
tion. It  devolved  on  Mr.  Gladstone  rather  than  on  Lord  Palmerston,  who 
was  now  within  a  few  months  of  the  end  of  his  life,  to  state  the  position  of 
the  government  in  the  matter  which  had  been  brought  to  the  attention  of 
the  House.  He  said  that  the  government  could  not  accept  the  resolution, 
but  significantly  added  that  xhey  were  not  prepared  to  deny  the  abstract  truth 
of  the  first  clause.  This  clause  was  that  the  present  position  of  the  Irish 
Church  Establishment  was  unsatisfactory.  The  government  could  not 
affirm  that  that  establishment  was  satisfactory.  Mr.  Gladstone  then  branched 
out  on  the  merits  of  the  question,  speaking  to  the  general  condition  of  the 
Irish  Church  and  its  relations  to  the  people  to  whom  it  was  expected  to 
minister.  The  general  tenor  of  his  argument  was  favorable  to  the  theory 
that  the  Episcopal  Establishment  in  Ireland  was  out  of  its  natural  and  just 
relations  with  the  people  of  that  country  ;  that  the  Church  was  really  in  a 
false  position,  logically  and  historically. 

"  There  is  not,"  said  the  speaker,  "  the  slightest  doubt  that  the  Church 
of  England  is  a  national  Church,  and  that  if  the  conditions  upon  which  the 
ecclesiastical  endowments  are  held  were  altered  at  the  Reformation,  that 
alteration  was  made  mainly  with  the  view  that  these  endowments  should  be 
intrusted  to  a  body  ministering  to   the  wants  of  a  great  majority  of  the 


356  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.  GLADSTONE. 

people.  I  am  bound  to  add  my  belief  that  those  who  directed  the  govern- 
ment of  this  country  in  the  reign  of  Queen  Elizabeth  acted  in  the  firm  con- 
viction that  that  which  had  happened  in  England  would  happen  in  Ireland  ; 
and  they  would  probably  be  not  a  little  surprised  if  they  could  look  down 
the  vista  of  time  and  see  that  in  the  year  1865  the  result  of  all  their  labors 
had  been  that,  after  three  hundred  years,  the  Church  which  they  had  endowed 
and  established  ministered  to  the  religious  wants  of  only  one  eighth  or  one 
ninth  part  of  the  community." 

The  speaker  then  referred  to  the  great  difficulty  of  prescribing  or  even 
suggesting  a  remedy  that  might  meet  the  evils  which  he  had  pointed  out. 
He  said  that  many  other  political  problems  were  closely  involved  with  that 
before  the  House.  He  went  so  far  as  to  become  the  spokesman  of  the  Irish 
people,  the  interpreter  of  their  thoughts,  and  declared  that  while  they  were, 
out  of  the  nature  of  the  case,  utterly  opposed  to  the  maintenance  of  the 
Chiirch  Establishment  in  their  country  when  that  Establishment  was  ben- 
eficial to  only  a  small  fraction  of  the  people,  they  were  not  covetous  of  the 
Church  endowments  for  themselves.  They  had  no  idea  of  availing  them- 
selves of  the  revenues  which  were  now  bestowed  on  the  Episcopal  Church 
in  Ireland. 

But  the  question  was  in  what  manner  the  administration  might  meet 
the  condition  of  affairs  here  set  forth.  Mr.  Gladstone  confessed  that  no 
satisfactory  way  appeared  of  meeting  it.  He  said  that  the  government 
could  not  follow  the  honorable  gentleman  (Mr.  Dillwyn)  into  the  lobby  and 
declare  it  to  be  the  duty  of  the  government  to  give  their  early  attention 
to  the  subject.  No  such  promise  or  hint  of  a  promise  as  that  could  be 
made.  And  why  not  }  It  could  not  be  made  for  the  reason  that  a  govern- 
ment so  promising  could  not  fulfill.  While  the  abstract  truth  of  the  honor- 
able gentleman's  proposition  was  admitted  it  related  to  a  kind  of  subject- 
matter  which  the  government,  not  being  omnipotent,  could  not  manage. 
The  government  could  not  reduce  history  to  logical  conditions. 

This  outgiving  of  an  opinion,  added  to  the  speech  which  Mr.  Gladstone 
had  made  on  the  Baines  Bill  relative  to  the  borough  franchise,  was  a  cry 
that  signified  much  in  Great  Britain.  The  speech  was  read  with  the  great- 
est interest  by  all  classes  of  people,  and  by  some  it  was  discerned  that  if 
history  were  not  logical  it  might  become  the  duty  of  a  government  in  Great 
Britain  to  contribute  something  toward  abolishing  its  illogical  character 
and  results.  How  far  Mr.  Gladstone  in  his  utterance  was  deliberate,  how 
far  he  had  excogitated  the  matter  beforehand,  reducino-  it  to  a  form  of 
expression  by  which  he  was  willing  to  stand  or  fall,  we  do  not  know.  At 
any  rate  he  put  himself  in  the  attitude  of  admitting  the  truth,  and  if  the 
truth,  then  the  justice,  of  an  open  indictment  of  the  Irish  Church.  As  to 
the  debate,  that  passed  without  further  results. 


PROGRESS    TOWARD    LIBERALISM,    AND    REJECTION    BY    OXFORD.  357 

Sir  George  Grey  spoke  for  the  government,  saying  that  a  measure 
could  not  be  brought  forward  calculated  to  promote  the  object  that  Mr. 
Dilhvyn  had  in  view.  That  object  was  nothing  less  than  the  disestablish- 
ment of  the  Irish  Church.  Mr.  Gathorne  Hardy  also  attacked  the  Dillwyn 
resolution  with  his  usual  force  and  acerbity,  Mr.  Whiteside,  whilom  the 
Conservative  attorney-general  for  Ireland,  in  his  turn  attacked  the  opinions 
presented  by  Mr.  Gladstone  ;  and  so  the  debate  was  at  length  adjourned. 

Soon  afterward,  however,  Mr.  Gladstone,  when  pressed  by  one  of  his 
correspondents  at  Trinity  College  to  take  up  the  cause  of  the  disestablish- 
ment of  the  Irish  Church,  gave  his  reasons  why  he  could  not  as  follows: 
"  First,  because  the  question  is  remote  and  apparently  out  of  all  bearing  on 
the  practical  politics  of  the  day,  I  think  it  would  be  for  me  worse  than 
superfluous  to  determine  upon  any  scheme,  or  basis  of  a  scheme,  with  respect 
to  it.  Secondly,  because  it  is  difficult  ;  even  if  I  anticipated  any  likelihood 
of  being  called  upon  to  deal  with  it  I  should  think  it  right  to  take  no  deci- 
sion beforehand  on  the  mode  of  dealing  with  the  difficulties.  But  the  first 
reason  is  that  which  chiefly  weighs.  ...  I  think  I  have  stated  strongly  my 
sense  of  the  responsibility  attaching  to  the  opening  of  such  a  question, 
except  in  a  state  of  things  which  gave  promise  of  satisfactorily  closing  it. 
For  this  reason  it  is  that  I  have  been  so  silent  about  the  matter,  and  may 
probably  be  so  again  ;  but  I  could  not,  as  a  minister  and  as  member  for. 
Oxford  University,  allow  it  to  be  debated  an  indefinite  number  of  times  and 
remain  silent.  One  thing,  however,  I  may  add,  because  I  think  it  a  clear 
landmark.  In  any  measure  dealing  with  the  Irish  Church  I  think  (though 
I  scarcely  expect  ever  to  be  called  on  to  share  in  such  a  measure)  the  act 
of  union  must  be  recognized  and  must  have  important  consequences,  espe- 
cially with  reference  to  the  position  of  the  hierarchy." 

Here,  then,  were  laid  the  foundations  of  the  great  controversy  which 
was  soon  to  arise.  History  can  say  only  thus  much,  that  the  time  had  come 
when  the  anachronism  of  the  English  Church  Establishment  in  Ireland 
must  be  rectified,  and,  with  her  usual  care,  she  had  provided  her  antecedent 
conditions  and  her  man.  The  personal  and  historical  results  of  Mr.  Glad- 
stone's utterances  were  soon  to  appear,  stirring  England  to  her  depths, 
transforming  somewhat  the  political  landscape  and  bringing  in  the  new  era 
of  liberalism. 

The  existing  Parliament  was  now  rapidly  approaching  its  constitutional 
limitations.  At  the  opening  of  the  session  of  1865  the  presentation  of  the 
budget  was  withheld  for  a  while,  the  same  not  being  presented  until  the 
27th  of  April  in  that  year.  Nor  will  the  American  reader  fail  to  remember 
the  great  events  that  were  just  then  completing  themselves  in  America. 
The  drama  of  secession  had  reached  its  bloody  end.  Appomattox  was 
passed  by  only  eighteen  clays,  and  the  assassination  of  Lincoln — dark  be  the 


358  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OP^    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

day  in  the  annals  of  mankind  ! — had  occurred  only  thirteen  days  previously. 
Not  our  own  country  only,  but  the  whole  civilized  world,  stood  for  a  time 
aghast  when  that  tall  patriot,  that  homely  genius,  that  tremendous  spirit 
of  the  age,  fell  prone  and  lay  still  in  his  sarcophagus  under  the  crash  of  the 
bullet  of  an  infamous  dastard. 

As  for  Mr.  Gladstone,  he  had  now  reached  a  period  in  his  financial 
career  when  he  was  virtually  master  of  the  situation.  He  had  the  confi- 
dence of  Great  Britain  to  a  remarkable  degree.  His  recommendations 
carried  with  them  as  they  came  almost  the  force  of  law.  On  the  occasion 
just  referred  to  he  addressed  the  House  in  his  usual  manner,  pointing  out, 
first  of  all,  the  contrasts  that  existed  as  between  that  day  so  near  the  close 
of  the  current  Parliament  and  that  other  day  when  that  body  first  convened. 
"  When  the  Parliament  met,"  said  he,  "  we  had  been  involved — although  we 
did  not  know  it  at  the  time — in  a  costly  and  difficult  war  with  China. 
The  harvest  of  the  year  which  succeeded  was  the  worst  that  had  been  known 
for  half  a  century.  The  recent  experience  of  war  had  led  to  costly,  exten- 
sive, and  somewhat  uncertain  reconstructions  ;  and  clouds  hung  over  the 
continent  of  Europe,  while  the  Italian  war  had  terminated  in  such  a  man- 
ner as  to  occasion  vague  but  serious  alarms  in  the  public  mind. 

"  Since  that  period  those  clouds  have  moved  westward  across  the  Atlan- 
tic, and  have  burst  in  a  tempest,  perhaps  the  wildest  that  ever  devastated 
a  civilized  country,  a  tempest  of  war  distinguished,  indeed,  by  the  exhibition 
of  many  of  the  most  marvelous  and  extraordinary  qualities  of  valor,  hero- 
ism, and  perseverance  ;  and  on  the  whole,  perhaps,  no  scenes  have  been  so 
entirely  painful  as  that  of  which  the  intelligence  has  last  reached  us,  which 
now  causes  one  thrill  of  horror  throughout  Europe. 

"  But  so  far  as  this  country  is  concerned  we  have  been  mercifully  spared. 
We  see  the  state  of  the  public  mind  tranquil  and  reassured,  and  the  condi- 
tion of  the  country  generally  prosperous  and  satisfactory.  The  financial 
history  of  the  Parliament  has  been  a  remarkable  one.  It  has  raised  a  larger 
revenue  than  I  believe,  at  any  period,  whether  of  peace  or  war,  was  ever 
raised  by  taxation.  After  taking  into  account  the  changes  in  the  value  of 
money  within  an  equal  time  the  expenditure  of  the  Parliament  has  been 
upon  a  scale  that  has  never  before  been  reached  in  time  of  peace.  The 
amount  and  variety  of  the  changes  introduced  into  our  financial  legislation 
have  been  greater  than  within  a  like  number  of  years  at  any  former  time. 
And  I  may  say,  lastly,  that  it  has  enjoyed  the  distinction  that,  although 
no  Parliament  ever  completes  the  full  term  of  its  legal  existence,  yet  this  is 
the  seventh  time  on  which  you  have  been  called  upon  to  make  provision  for 
the  financial  exigencies  of  the  country." 

These  paragraphs  aptly  illustrate  the  manner  of  Mr.  Gladstone  on  the 
occasion  of  presenting  a  budget.     Year  after  year  he  delivered  what  may  be 


PROGRESS    TOWARD    LIBERALISM,    AND    REJECTION    BY    OXFORD.  359 

called  fiscal  orations,  putting  into  them  the  necessary  statistics  and  practical 
recommendations ;  but  he  did  this  with  a  skill  which  hardly  marred  the  flow 
of  his  eloquence.  On  the  present  occasion  he  was  able  in  a  business  way  to 
report  another  diminution  of  expenditures.  The  estimate  on  this  score  had 
not  been  reached  by  six  hundred  and  eleven  thousand  pounds.  On  the 
other  hand,  and  still  more  gratifying,  was  the  excess  of  the  revenue  over  the 
estimates.  Under  this  head  there  was  an  increase  of  three  million  a 
hundred  and  eighty-five  thousand  pounds  ;  indeed,  the  surplus  which  had 
accumulated  was  well  up  to  four  million  pounds. 

During  the  year  there  had  been  a  large  reduction  in  the  national  debt. 
The  average  of  such  reductions  in  the  last  six  years  had  been  about  three 
million  pounds  annually.  In  the  next  place  the  speaker  referred  with 
pleasure  to  the  paper  trade  and  to  the  general  commercial  relations  between 
England  and  France.  While  the  trade  of  the  latter  country  had  increased 
more  rapidly  than  that  of  England  during  the  past  year  British  trade  had 
also  increased  in  a  satisfactory  measure.  There  was  also  a  very  gratifying 
trade  balance  with  Belgium  and  Holland.  Once  more  he  emphasized  the 
great  advantage  which  the  country  had  gained  by  making  trade  as  free  as 
the  winds  and  seas.  Here  again  he  turned  aside  to  repeat  and  vary  the 
eulogy  which  he  had  more  than  once  pronounced  on  Richard  Cobden,  the 
Father  of  Fjee  Trade. 

Turning  ^o  the  question  of  the  fiscal  management  for  the  ensuing 
year,  he  presented  an  estimate  of  expenditure  of  sixty-six  million  a 
hundred  and  thirty-nine  thousand  pounds.  He  calculated  the  total  revenue 
at  seventy  million  a  hundred  and  seventy  thousand  pounds.  This  would 
produce  a  surplus  of  more  than  four  million  pounds.  How  should  this 
large  sum  be  applied  ?  Should  it  be  used  to  extinguish  the  duty  on  malt? 
That,  the  speaker  thought,  would  be  the  end  of  the  system  of  indirect 
taxation  in  Great  Britain.  This  might  be  done,  but  it  was  not  the  most 
desirable  method  of  balancing  the  surplus.  He  admitted  that  beer  was 
twenty  per  cent  higher  than  it  would  be  if  the  duty  were  removed  from 
malt ;  but  he  showed  that  it  would  require  a  reduction  of  only  one  farthing 
the  quart  to  consume  one  half  or  more  of  all  the  expected  surplus  for  the 
ensuing  year.  Was  it  worth  while  to  attempt  at  such  a  cost  so  small  a 
reduction  in  the  price  of  beer  to  consumers  ? 

The  House  must  remember  in  this  connection  that  while  beer  was 
taxed  twenty  per  cent  the  wines  which  met  the  greatest  consumption  in 
England  were  taxed  fully  fifty  per  cent.  If  it  was  a  question  of  cheapening 
the  popular  drinks  then  why  not  begin  wnth  the  duty  on  wine  ?  Moreover, 
the  growing  consumption  of  beer  in  England  showed  conclusively  that  the 
tax  did  not  perceptibly  impede  the  use  of  the  article.  Again,  the  tax  on 
tea   was  forty  per  cent  by  the  chest ;  wherefore  the  common  drink  of  the 


360  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

poorer  classes  at  the  domestic  board  was  taxed  twice  as  heavily  as  beer  1 
To  his  mind  it  was  clear  that  the  next  reduction  of  duty  ought  to  be  a 
reduction  of  the  tea  tax,  and  this  he  recommended  by  sixpence  a  pound. 
He  showed  that  the  aggregate  loss  to  the  revenue  from  this  source  would 
be,  at  the  present  rate  of  importation,  two  million  three  hundred  and 
seventy-five  thousand  pounds.  But  with  a  reduction  of  the  tax  a  much 
larger  quantity  of  tea  would  be  consumed,  from  which  he  thought  the 
actual  loss  would  not  exceed  a  million  eight  hundred  and  eight  thousand 
pounds. 

Mr.  Gladstone  next  came  to  the  ever-present  and  all-important 
question  of  the  income  tax.  What  should  be  done  with  that  ?  He  would 
recommend  the  reduction  of  the  same  from  sixpence  to  fourpence  the  pound. 
This  would  diminish  the  sum  total  of  that  tax  to  a  little  over  five  million 
pounds.  It  would  also  bring  the  rate  to  fourpence,  which  the  chancellor  of 
the  exchequer  thought  was  as  small  a  figure  as  need  to  be  retained  at  all. 
If  there  were  to  be  further  reduction  it  might  be  made  a  total  abolition, 
and  have  done.  That  question  he  would  leave  to  the  next  Parliament,  to 
be  dealt  with  according  to  its  wisdom. 

Adding  together  the  loss  from  the  reduction  of  the  duty  on  tea  and 
that  from  the  reduction  of  the  income  tax  Mr.  Gladstone  was  still  able  to 
shov/  a  surplus  that  would  justify  a  further  reduction  in  the  expense  of  fire 
insurance.  Hitherto  a  duty  of  a  shilling  had  been  charged  pn  each  policy  ; 
he  would  recommend  that  this  duty  be  reduced  to  a  penny  stamp  for  each 
policy.  To  sum  up,  the  budget  showed  a  reduction  of  taxation  to  the 
amount  of  five  million  four  hundred  and  twenty  thousand  pounds.  There 
would  be  a  total  loss  to  revenue  in  the  following  year  of  three  million  seven 
hundred  and  seventy-eight  thousand  pounds,  and  for  the  ensuing  year 
(1866-67)  of  a  million  four  hundred  and  seventeen  thousand  pounds.  After 
all  balances  were  made  there  would  still  remain  a  surplus  of  a  little  more 
than  two  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  pounds,  which  Mr.  Gladstone  urged 
the  necessity  of  retaining  against  the  contingencies  of  the  treasury. 

The  document  thus  presented  was  less  elaborate  than  its  predecessors. 
It  also  invaded  less  the  grounds  of  controversy.  Only  on  one  question  was 
there  a  serious  objection  to  the  budget,  whether  in  the  house  or  out  of  it. 
That  related  to  the  duty  on  malt.  The  maltsters  and  barley  farmers  were 
of  course  dissatisfied,  and  their  representatives  were  ready  to  declaim. 
Nevertheless  the  opposition  was  ineffectual.  The  bill  for  the  adoption  of 
the  budget  was  readily  passed  without  amendments.  In  many  respects  the 
measures  proposed  were  met  with  great  popular  favor.  The  reduction  of 
the  tea  tax  was  something  to  appeal  to  the  common  people.  At  the  other 
extreme  of  society  the  payers  of  large  sums  on  incomes  cheerfully  accepted 
the  reduction  that  was  offered.     Moreover,  the  recent   heavy  expenditures 


TROGRESS    TOWARD    LIBERALISM,    AND    REJECTION    15  V    OXFORD.  36 1 

for  fortifications  and  for  the  maintenance  of  navies  in  distant  seas  were 
either  at  an  end  or  greatly  reduced.  Mr.  Gladstone  was  able  to  pass  his 
annual  ordeal  with  more  than  the  usual  applause. 

The  Parliament  so  long  in  existence  was  now  drawing  rapidly  to  a 
close.  It  would  reach  its  constitutional  limitation  on  the  6th  of  July,  1865. 
Lord  Palmerston  had  already  announced  the  termination  of  the  session  and 
the  end  of  the  existino-  Parliament  at  that  date.  Already  the  members  of 
the  House  were  busy  with  preparation  for  going  to  the  country  on  the 
records  made.  It  was  noted  that  political  excitement  was  for  the  time 
running  low.  There  could  hardly  be  found  a  single  question  of  general 
importance  on  which  the  electors  might  divide.  There  were,  however,  many 
local  questions,  and  the  seats  of  great  numbers  of  members  were  to  be 
vigorously  contested.     What  about  William  E.  Gladstone.'^ 

The  statesman  'made  the  usual  appeal  to  his  constituency  of  Oxford 
University.  He  might  well  expect  that  his  great  success  as  a  finance  minis- 
ter and  his  widening  reputation,  extending  to  all  civilized  lands,  would  ap- 
peal strongly  for  indorsement  to  the  electors  on  whom  he  must  depend  for 
his  return  to  Parliament.  Now  it  was,  however,  that  his  advanced  and  ad- 
vancing opinions  on  both  secular  and  ecclesiastical  concerns  began  to  tell 
seriously  on  his  prospects  in  the  ancient  seat  of  learning.  There  was  a  por- 
tentous defection  from  his  interest.  A  clamor  was  raised  against  his  prin- 
ciples. His  speech  on  the  Baines  Bill  and  his  more  offending  utterance  on 
the  Dillwvn  resolution  were  brouorht  forth  against  him.  He  had  become  a 
dangerous  man  !  Opposition  put  on  a  bold  front.  It  was  noted  that  the 
enemy  was  not  so  strong  in  the  very  seat  of  the  university  as  it  was  among 
those  electors  who  were  nonresident  at  Oxford.  The  older  Fellows  and 
others  whose  opinions  had  been  fixed  at  an  earlier  date  were  mortally 
offended  at  their  representative,  and  were  determined  to  prevent  his  re- 
election. 

It  chanced  at  this  particular  juncture  that  a  new  system  of  voting  had 
been  adopted,  by  which  the  electors  of  Oxford  were  authorized  to  send  their 
ballots  through  the  mail  to  the  vice  chancellors,  thus  obviating  the  necessity 
of  going  to  the  poll  in  person.  The  same  measure  extended  the  time  of 
voting  to  a  period  of  five  days.  The  scheme  had  been  devised  by  the 
Liberals  as  a  matter  of  convenience  and  popularity,  and  with  little  expecta- 
tion that  on  the  very  first  trial  it  would  return  to  plague  the  inventors  by 
giving  an  advantage  to  the  nonresident  opponents  of  Mr.  Gladstone.  But 
so  it  was. 

The  Conservatives  came  to  the  contest  in  full  feather.  Their  candi- 
date in  direct  opposition  to  Mr.  Gladstone  was  Gathorne  Hardy,  whose  wit 
and  force  of  character  made  him  by  no  means  an  opponent  to  be  despised. 
As  to  Sir  William  Heathcote,  the  other  representative  of  Oxford,  he  was  to 


362  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

be  returned  by  common  consent  of  both  parties.  The  election,  or  in  English 
parlance,  the  nomination,  began  on  the  13th  of  July.  Dr.  Liddell,  Dean  of 
Christ  Church  College,  proposed  Mr.  Gladstone ;  Sir  William  Heathcote 
was  named  by  the  warden  of  All  Souls'  College  ;  and  Mr.  Hardy  was  an- 
nounced by  the  public  orator  of  St.  John's. 

As  the  election  proceeded  it  was  found  that  Mr.  Gladstone  was  falling 
behind  his  competitor.  At  the  end  of  the  first  day's  voting  there  was  a 
serious  difficulty  involving  a  question  of  law.  Samuel  Wilberforce,  Bishop 
of  Winchester,  son  of  William  Wilberforce,  the  philanthropist,  came  to  the 
poll  to  vote.  On  announcing  his  name  he  was  informed  that  by  a  new  law 
of  Parliament  peers  of  the  realm  were  not  permitted  to  vote  at  elections 
for  members  of  the  House  of  Commons.  The  bishop  said  he  was  informed 
of  the  law,  but  offered  his  vote  none  the  less  ;  and  the  ballot  was  accepted. 
Two  or  three  other  peers,  of  whom  one  was  the  Bishop  of  Durham,  also 
voted  for  Mr.  Gladstone  ;  but  even  this  powerful — if  illegal — support  could 
not  avail  ;  and  before  the  five  days'  voting  was  out  it  became  evident  that 
Mr.  Gladstone  would  be  defeated. 

An  appeal  was  sent  out  at  this  crisis  by  Sir  John  Taylor  Coleridge, 
recently  Justice  of  the  King's  Bench,  in  which  he  set  forth  the  danger  of  the 
defeat  of  the  Liberal  candidate,  saying:  "  The  committee  do  not  scruple  to 
advocate  his  cause  on  grounds  above  the  common  level  of  politics.  They 
claim  for  him  the  gratitude  due  to  one  whose  public  life  has  for  eighteen 
years  reflected  a  luster  on  the  university  herself.  They  confidently  invite 
you  to  consider  whether  his  pure  and  exalted  character,  his  splendid  abilities, 
and  his  eminent  services  to  Church  and  State  do  not  constitute  the  highest 
of  all  qualifications  for  an  academical  seat  and  entitle  him  to  be  judged  by 
his  constituents  as  he  will  assuredly  be  judged  by  posterity." 

The  event  justified  the  growing  expectation.  On  the  last  day  of  the 
voting  the  Liberals  made  a  rally;  but  the  election  had  already  gone  against 
their  candidate.  Sir  William  Heathcote  received  virtually  the  whole  vote 
of  the  Oxford  constituency;  that  is,  3,226.  Mr.  Gathorne  Hardy  had  1,904, 
and  Mr.  Gladstone  1,724,  leaving  the  latter  in  a  minority  of  180  votes.  The 
total  of  ballots  cast  showed  that  the  constituency  was  aroused.  Of  the 
votes  415  had  no  other  name  than  that  of  Mr.  Gladstone,  while  of  this  kind 
there  were  but  43  for  Sir  William  Heathcote,  and  only  16  for  Mr.  Gathorne 
Hardy. 

The  friends  of  the  candidates,  particularly  the  adherents  of  Mr.  Glad- 
stone, were  quick  to  analyze  the  votes,  and  to  point  out  the  peculiarities  of 
the  contest.  It  was  found  that  a  fair  majority  of  the  resident  Oxonians  were 
for  Gladstone,  and,  what  was  more  important,  this  majority  included  nearly 
every  name  of  men  whose  support  in  America  from  that  seat  of  learning 
would  be  regarded  as  an  honor.     Among  these  were  the  great  scholar.  Pro- 


PROGRESS    TOWARD    LIBERALISM,    AND    REJECTION    BY    OXFORD.  363 

fessor  Max  Miiller;  Sir  John  Taylor  Coleridge,  Justice  of  the  King's  Bench; 
the  poet  Francis  Turner  Palgrave  ;  Professor  John  Conington,  the  trans- 
lator of  Vergil  ;  Edward  Augustus  Freeman,  the  historian  ;  Professor  Ben- 
jamin Jowett,  the  translator  of  Plato  ;  Dr.  Jelf,  custodian  of  the  Bodleian 
Library  ;  and  the  three  Bishops  (be  it  said  to  their  honor!)  of  Durham,  Ox- 
ford, and  Chester.  This  array  of  scholarship,  character,  and  progress, 
standing  firmly  in  his  support,  might  almost  compensate  Mr.  Gladstone  for 
the  loss  of  his  election. 

Indeed,  of  the  whole  college  body,  properly  so-called,  the  chancellor 
of  the  exchequer  had  as  his  supporters  the  great  majority.  Twenty-four 
of  the  professors  gave  him  their  votes,  while  only  ten  supported  Mr.  Hardy. 
In  Lincoln  College  seven  of  the  ten  Fellows  voted  for  Gladstone,  and  only 
three  for  his  opponent.  Moreover,  it  must  have  been — and  was — when  the 
business  was  done,  that  they  who  compassed  Mr.  Gladstone's  defeat  should 
feel  a  certain  inward  wilting  over  their  triumph.  It  is  in  human  nature  to 
do  such  things  and  to  repent  afterward. 

The  election  at  Oxford  was  decisive  of  much.  The  chancellor  of  the 
exchequer  was  cast  forth  to  seek  what  constituency  he  might  in  a  more 
congenial  field.  To  him  there  was  in  the  event  a  mingled  sense  of  regret 
and  exultation.  For  how  long  a  time  he  had  felt  hampered  and  constrained 
by  the  views  and  political  purposes  of  his  constituents  we  know  not.  That 
he  was  heartily  tired  of  the  necessity  that  was  on  him  to  be  true  to  the  wishes 
and  opinions  of  his  electoral  body  may  well  be  believed.  Now,  in  any  event, 
he  was  set  free.  He  might  seek  among  the  numerous  bodies  of  English 
electors  a  new  support,  whose  purposes  and  motives  back  of  him  might 
better  accord  with  his  own.  He  was  not  the  man  to  be  cast  down  by  re- 
verse— if  reverse  that  might  be  called  which  had  made  him  a  free  man. 

To  the  British  Liberals  the  result  at  Oxford  seemed  a  happy  deliver- 
ance. They  perceived  at  a  glance  that  the  liberalizing  tendencies  in  Glad- 
stone's mind  would  be  accentuated  by  the  thing  done.  Throughout  England 
there  was  a  general  opinion  that  Oxford  had  made  a  sad  muss  of  her  oppor- 
tunity. That  a  great  academic  institution  should  discard  a  man  like  Glad- 
stone appeared  to  reason  as  a  thing  well-nigh  impossible.  The  public 
sentiment  ran  strongly  to  the  notion  that  Oxford  had  fallen  down  in  the 
dirt.  The  newspapers — at  least  the  leading  journals — echoed  this  opinion 
far  and  wide.  The  London  Times  suggested  that  the  enemies  of  Oxford 
would  make  the  most  of  her  recent  disgrace.  "It  has  hitherto  been  sup- 
posed," said  that  great  organ,  "  that  a  learned  constituency  was  to  some 
extent  exempt  from  the  vulgar  motives  of  party  spirit,  and  capable  of  form- 
ing a  higher  estimate  of  statesmanship  than  common  tradesmen  or  tenant 
farmers.  It  will  now  stand  on  record  that  they  have  deliberately  sacrificed 
a  representative  who  combined  the  very  highest  qualifications,  moral  and 


364  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    CJLADStONE. 

intellectual,  for  an  academical  seat,  to  party  spirit,  and  party  spirit  alone. 
Mr.  Gladstone's  brilliant  public  career,  his  great  academical  distinctions  and 
literary  attainments,  his  very  subtlety  and  sympathies  with  ideas  for  their 
own  sake,  mark  him  out  beyond  all  living  men  for  such  a  position.  How- 
ever progressive  in  purely  secular  politics,  he  has  ever  shown  himself  a 
stanch  and  devoted  Churchman,  wherever  Church  doctrine  or  ecclesiastical 
rights  were  concerned."  The  Times  went  on  to  enlarge  upon  this  state- 
nient,  and  to  establish  it  with  citations  from  Mr.  Gladstone's  past  history, 
showing  his  loyalty  to  the  existing  religious  order.  Continuing,  the  paper 
said  :  "  Henceforth  Mr.  Gladstone  will  belong  to  the  country,  but  no  longer 
to  the  university.  Those  Oxford  influences  and  traditions  which  have  so 
deeply  colored  his  views,  and  so  greatly  interfered  with  his  better  judgment, 
must  gradually  lose  their  hold  on  him." 

Such  was  the  decision  of  the  T/nuidcrer  on  this  important  personal  and 
historical  episode.  Other  great  organs  of  opinion  ratified  the  same  notion 
relative  to  Oxford's  mistake  and  Gladstone's  emancipation.  The  London 
Daily  News,  Tit  that  time  the  mouthpiece  of  the  Liberal  party  in  the  metrop- 
olis, said :  "  Mr.  Gladstone's  career  as  a  statesman  will  certainly  not  be 
arrested,  nor  Mr.  Gathorne  Hardy's  capacity  be  enlarged  by  the  number  of 
votes  which  Tory  squires  or  Tory  parsons  may  inflict  upon  Lord  Derby's 
cheerful  and  fluent  subaltern,  or  withhold  from  Lord  Palmerston's  brilliant 
colleague.  The  late  Sir  Robert  Peel  was  but  the  chief  of  a  party  until, 
admonished  by  one  ostracism,  he  became  finally  emancipated  by  another. 
Then,  as  now,  the  statesman  who  was  destined  to  give  up  to  mankind  what 
was  never  meant  for  the  barren  service  of  a  party  could  say  to  the  honest 
bigots  who  rejected  him  : 

'  I  banish  you: 
There  is  a  world  elsewhere.' 

Mediocrity  will  not  be  turned  into  genius,  honest  and  good-natured  insig- 
nificance into  force,  fluency  into  eloquence,  if  the  resident  and  nonresident 
Toryism  of  the  University  of  Oxford  should  prefer  the  safe  and  sound  Mr. 
Hardy  to  the  illustrious  minister  whom  all  Europe  envies  us,  whose  name  is 
a  household  word  in  every  political  assembly  in  the  world." 

So  the  expressions  of  public  opinion  drew  in  this  direction  and  in  that. 
The  journals  of  the  Church  Establishment  for  the  most  part  justified  the 
thing  done  by  Oxford;  and  therein  lay  the  secret  of  the  whole  business. 
Political  conservatism  Mr.  Gladstone  was  able  to  drag  after  him  somewhat, 
and  to  plant  it  slowly  in  more  liberal  fields ;  ecclesiastical  conservatism, 
never.  The  former  mig-ht  forsi^ive  him  for  advancing  in  the  direction  of  new 
truth  ;  the  latter  would  forgive  neither  him  nor  any  man  for  leaving  the  old 
camping  ground  or  for  suggesting  that  by  any  possibility  a  better  station 
miorht  be  found  on  the  other  side  of  the  mountain. 


PROGRESS    TOWARD    LIBERALIS.M,    AND    REJECTION    BY    OXFORD.  365 

The  chancellor  of  the  exchequer  took  his  defeat  with' perfect  good 
humor.  We  may  discover  in  what  he  said  and  wrote  just  afterward  some 
evidence  of  suppressed  excitement,  but  no  sign  of  mortification  or  resent- 
ment. On  the  1 8th  of  July,  the  day  after  the  closing  of  the  poll  at  Oxford, 
he  sent  to  the  members  of  the  Convocation  his  valedictory  address,  saying: 
"  After  an  arduous  connection  of  eighteen  years  I  bid  you,  respectfully, 
farewell.  My  earnest  purpose  to  serve  you,  my  many  faults  and  shortcom- 
ings, the  incidents  of  the  political  relation  between  the  university  and  myself, 
established  in  1847,  so  often  questioned  in  vain,  and  now,  at  length,  finally 
dissolved,  I  leave  to  the  judgment  of  the  future.  It  is  one  imperative  duty, 
and  one  alone,  which  induces  me  to  trouble  you  with  these  few  parting 
words — the  duty  of  expressing  m)'  profound  and  lasting  gratitude  for 
indulgence  as  generous,  and  for  support  as  warm  and  enthusiastic  in  itself, 
and  as  honorable  from  the  character  and  distinctions  of  those  who  have 
given  it,  as  has,  in  my  belief,  ever  been  accorded  by  any  constituency  to 
any  representative." 

After  the  Oxonians,  whom  .?  Mr.  Gladstone  immediately  surveyed  the 
landscape, and  saw  in  South  Lancashire  his  open  opportunity.  The  election 
there  had  not  yet  been  held.  On  the  last  day  of  the  balloting  at  Oxford, 
the  electors  in  South  Lancashire,  foreseeing  what  was  to  come  in  the  Oxo- 
nian complication,  proposed  the  name  of  William  E.  Gladstone  as  their  rep- 
resentative. After  sending  his  brief  note  to  his  former  constituency  Mr. 
Gladstone,  on  the  same  day,  made  all  haste  to  Manchester,  and  there  had  an 
interview  with  the  local  leaders  of  that  party  of  which  he  was  himself  to 
become  the  leader  par  excellence. 

The  interview  was  highly  satisfactory,  and  the  chancellor  of  the 
exchequer  at  once  prepared  and  sent  out  his  address  to  the  electors.  "  I 
appear  before  you,"  said  he  to  the  voters  of  South  Lancashire,  "  as  a  candi- 
date for  the  suffrages  of  your  division  of  my  native  county.  Time  forbids 
me  to  enlarge  on  the  numerous  topics  which  justly  engage  the  public 
interest.  I  will  bring  them  all  to  a  single  head.  You  are  conversant — few 
so  much  so — with  the  legislation  of  the  last  thirty-five  years.  You  have 
seen,  you  have  felt  its  results.  You  cannot  fail  to  have  observed  the  verdict 
which  the  country  generally  has  within  the  last  eight  days  pronounced  upon 
the  relative  claims  and  positions  of  the  two  great  political  parties  with 
respect  to  that  legislation  in  the  past  and  to  the  prospective  legislation  of 
public  affairs.  I  humbly,  but  confidently,  without  the  least  disparagement 
to  many  excellent  persons,  from  whom  I  have  the  misfortune  frequently  to 
differ,  ask  you  to  give  your  powerful  voice  in  confirmation  of  that  verdict, 
and  to  pronounce  with  significance  as  to  the  direction  in  which  you  desire 
the  wheels  of  the  State  to  turn.  Before  these  words  can  be  read  I  hope  to 
be  among  you,  in  the  hives  of  your  teeming  enterprise." 


366  LIFi^    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

And  SO  he  was.  He  was  received  on  the  following  day  on  the  Man- 
chester Exchange.  The  hum  of  excitement  swelled  to  a  roar  as  the  distin- 
guished candidate  was  borne  away  to  the  Free-Trade  Hall,  in  which  he  was 
to  address  his  intending  constituents.  There  the  throng  had  gathered  to 
the  number  of  many  thousands.  The  people  poured  in  like  a  flood,  and  the 
orator,  as  he  beean,  struck  hre  with  his  first  sentence.  He  said:  "At  last, 
my  friends,  I  am  come  among  you — and  I  am  come,  to  use  an  expression 
which  has  become  very  famous  and  is  not  likely  to  be  forgotten,  I  am  come 
among  you  unmuzzled !''  The  vast  crowd  caught  the  reference  and  broke 
into  a  universal  shout.  The  speaker  had  already,  with  that  one  word,  car- 
ried Manchester.  The  whole  drama  of  the  contest  at  Oxford,  with  the  sug- 
gestion of  long  constraint  now  ended,  was  revealed  at  a  stroke  in  the  word 
unmuzzled.  It  was  equivalent  to  saying,  "  I  shall  now  speak  out  my  best 
thought  on  the  political  and  ecclesiastical  polity  of  Great  Britain." 

Mr.  Gladstone  went  on  to  say  that  after  an  anxious  struggle  of  eighteen 
years,  during  which  time  he  had  been  upheld  by  the  unbounded  devotion 
and  partiality  of  his  friends,  the  electors  of  the  University  of  Oxford,  who 
had  maintained  him  in  the  arduous  position  of  their  representative,  he  had 
been  pushed  from  his  seat.  "  I  have  loved  the  university,"  said  he,  "with  a 
deep  and  passionate  love,  and,  as  long  as  I  breathe,  that  attachment  will 
continue  ;  if  my  affection  is  of  the  smallest  advantage  to  that  great,  that 
ancient,  that  noble  institution,  that  advantage,  such  as  it  is,  and  it  is  most 
insignificant,  Oxford  will  possess  as  long  as  I  live.  But  do  not  mistake  the 
issue  which  has  been  raised.  The  university  has  at  length,  after  eighteen 
years  of  self-denial,  been  drawn,  by  what  I  might,  perhaps,  call  an  overween- 
ing exercise  of  power,  into  the  vortex  of  mere  politics.  Well,  you  will 
readily  understand  why,  as  long  as  I  had  a  hope  that  the  zeal  and  kindness 
of  my  friends  might  keep  me  in  my  place,  it  was  impossible  for  me  to  aban- 
don them.  Could  they  have  returned  me  by  a  majority  of  one,  painful  as  it 
is  to  a  man  of  my  time  of  life,  and  feeling  the  weight  of  public  cares,  to  be 
incessantly  struggling  for  his  seat,  nothing  could  have  induced  me  to  quit 
that  university  to  which  I  had  so  long  ago  devoted  my  best  care  and  attach- 
ment. 

"  But  by  no  act  of  mine,"  continued  the  speaker,  "  I  am  free  to  come 
amono-  you.  And  having  been  thus  set  free,  I  need  hardly  tell  you  that  it  is 
with  joy,  with  thankfulness  and  enthusiasm,  that  I  now,  at  this  eleventh 
hour,  a  candidate  without  an  address,  make  my  appeal  to  the  heart  and  the 
mind  of  South  Lancashire,  and  ask  you  to  pronounce  upon  that  appeal.  As 
I  have  said,  I  am  aware  of  no  cause  for  the  votes  which  have  given  a 
majority  against  me  in  the  University  of  Oxford,  except  the  fact  that  the 
strongest  conviction  that  the  human  mind  can  receive,  that  an  overpowering 
sense  of  the  public  interests,  that  the  practical   teachings  of  experience,  to 


PROGRESS    TOWARD    LIBERALISM,    AND    REJECTION    BY    OXFORD.  367 

which  from  my  youth  Oxford  herself  taught  me  to  lay  open  my  mind — all 
these  had  shown  me  the  folly,  and,  I  will  say,  the  madness  of  refusing  to 
join  in  the  generous  sympathies  of  my  countrymen,  by  adopting  what  I  must 
call  an  obstructive  policy." 

The  speaker  then  adverted  to  the  magnificent  legislation  that  had  been 
enacted  under  the  direct  and  indirect  influence  of  the  Liberal  party.  "  With- 
out entering,"  said  he,  "  into  details,  without  unrolling  the  long  record  of  all 
the  great  measures  that  have  been  passed — the  emancipation  of  Roman 
Catholics  ;  the  removal  of  tests  from  Dissenters  ;  the  emancipation  of  the 
slaves ;  the  reformation  of  the  Poor  Law  ;  the  reformation — I  had  almost 
said  the  destruction,  but  it  is  the  reformation — of  the  Tariff;  the  abolition  of 
the  Corn  Laws;  the  abolition  of  the  Navigation  Laws;  the  conclusion  of 
the  French  treaty ;  the  laws  which  have  relieved  Dissenters  from  stigma 
and  almost  ignominy,  and  which  in  doing  so  have  not  weakened,  but  have 
strenufthened,  the  Church  to  which  I  belonor — all  these  ereat  acts  accom- 
plished  with  the  same,  I  had  almost  said  sublime,  tranquillity  of  the  whole 
country  as  that  with  which  your  own  vast  machinery  performs  its  appointed 
task,  as  it  were,  in  perfect  repose — all  these  things  have  been  done.  You 
have  seen  the  acts.  You  have  seen  the  fruits.  It  is  natural  to  inquire  who 
have  been  the  doers.  In  a  very  humble  measure,  and  yet  according  to  the 
degree  and  capacity  which  Providence  has  bestowed  upon  me,  I  have  been 
desirous,  not  to  obstruct,  but  to  promote  and  assist,  this  beneficent  and 
blessed  process.  And  if  I  entered  Parliament,  as  I  did  enter  Parliament, 
with  a  warm  and  anxious  desire  to  maintain  the  institutions  of  my  country, 
I  can  truly  say  that  there  is  no  period  of  my  life  during  which  my  con- 
science is  so  clear,  and  renders  me  so  good  an  answer,  as  those  years  in 
which  I  have  cooperated  in  the  promotion  of  Liberal  measures.  .  .  .  Because 
they  are  Liberal  they  are  the  true  measures,  and  indicate  the  true  policy 
by  which  the  country  is  made  strong  and  its  Institutions  preserved." 

This  speech,  of  which  the  extracts  are  but  a  hint,  was  the  beginning  of 
a  short,  swift  campaign  that  roared  along  with  enthusiasm  to  its  end.  From 
the  Free-Trade  Hall  of  Manchester  the  candidate  went  next  and  spoke  on 
the  same  evening  in  the  Royal  Amphitheater  at  Liverpool.  There  he  was 
met  with  the  same  popular  approval.  It  was  evident  that  he  was  already 
becoming  the  idol  of  the  great  middle  classes  of  the  English  people.  For 
the  time  he  was  visited  with  what  Whittier  calls  "  the  angel  of  the  backward 
look,"  who  reminded  him  ever,  and  anon  of  the  academic  shades  at  Oxford. 
At  Liverpool  he  referred  again  to  the  university  which  had  sent  him  forth 
in  his  youth  and  had  nov^  sent  him  forth  in  a  different  sense.  "  If  I  am  told," 
said  he,  "  that  it  is  only  by  embracing  the  narrow  interests  of  a  politi- 
cal party  that  Oxford  can  discharge  her  duties  to  the  country,  then, 
gentlemen,  I  at  once  say  I   am  not  the  man   for   Oxford.     We  see  repre- 


368  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

sented  in  that  ancient  institution — represented  more  nobly,  perhaps,  and 
more  conspicuously  than  in  any  other  place,  at  any  rate  with  more  remark- 
able concentration — the  most  prominent  features  that  relate  to  the  past  of 
England.  I  come  into  South  Lancashire,  and  I  find  here  around  me  an 
assemblage  of  different  phenomena.  I  find  development  of  industry  ;  I  find 
growth  of  enterprise;  I  find  progress  of  social  philanthropy;  I  find  prev- 
alence of  toleration  ;  and  I  find  an  ardent  desire  for  freedom." 

The  speaker  went  on  to  elaborate  the  aspects  of  the  social  and  indus- 
trial condition  in  the  great  centers  of  Liverpool  and  Manchester.  He  spoke 
in  commendation  of  the  tremendous  social,  industrial,  and  commercial  forces 
that  were  here  displayed,  and  in  profound  sympathy  with  the  teeming  cities 
and  progressive  people  that  had  evolved  so  auspicious  a  civic  life.  Then 
he  continued  :  "  I  have  honestly,  I  have  earnestly,  although  I  may  have 
feebly,  striven  to  unite  in  my  insignificant  person  that  which  is  represented 
by  Oxford  and  that  which  is  represented  by  Lancashire.  INIy  desire  is  that 
they  should  know  and  love  one  another.  If  I  have  clung  to  the  representa- 
tion of  the  university  with  desperate  fondness,  it  w^as  because  I  would  not 
desert  that  post  in  which  I  seem  to  have  been  placed.  I  have  not 
abandoned  it.  I  have  been  dismissed  from  it,  not  by  academical,  but  b\' 
political  agencies. 

"  I  do  not  complain,"  said  the  speaker,  "  of  those  political  influences  by 
which  I  have  been  displaced.  The  free  constitutional  spirit  of  the  country 
requires  that  the  voice  of  the  majority  shall  prevail.  I  hope  the  voice  of 
the  majority  will  prevail  in  South  Lancashire.  I  do  not  for  a  moment 
complain  that  it  should  have  prevailed  at  Oxford  ;  but,  gentlemen,  I  come 
now  to  ask  you  a  question  whether,  because  I  have  been  declared  unfit 
longer  to  serve  the  university  on  account  of  my  political  position,  there  is 
anything  in  what  I  have  said  and  done  in  the  arduous  office  which  I  hold 
which  is  to  unfit  me  for  the  representation  of  my  native  county." 

The  reader  may  discover  in  this  appeal  the  deep  anxiety  of  a  great 
and  earnest  mind  not  to  be  again  stranded  on  the  rocks.  The  orator  did 
not  fail,  however,  to  lay  sound  logical  foundations  also  for  his  intending 
constituents  to  build  upon.  He  took  up  the  course  of  legislation  as 
promoted  by  the  liberal  ministry  of  Lord  Palmerston,  and  enacted  by 
the  House  of  Commons,  and  defended  that  polic}'  against  the  arguments  of 
Conservative  politicians  and  statesmen.  But  he  had  no  time  for  much 
speaking.  The  day  of  the  poll  was  already  at  hand.  On  the  20th  of  July  the 
election  was  held,  and  resulted  in  the  choice  of  two  Conservatives  and  one 
Liberal,  the  latter  being  William  E.  Gladstone.  The  candidate  having  the 
highest  number  of  votes  (9,171)  was  Mr.  A.  Egerton  ;  the  second  in  rank 
was  Mr.  Turner,  who  received  8,806  votes  ;  and  the  third  was  Mr.  Gladstone, 
who    received    8,786    votes.     The    majority    of    the   last    named    over    his 


PROGRESS    TOWARD    LIBERALISM,    AND    REJECTION    BY    OXFORD.  369 

Conservative  competitor,  Mr.  Leigh,  was  only  310  votes.  In  Liverpool  and 
Manchester,  however,  the  balloting  showed  better  results  for  the  Liberal 
candidates.  In  these  great  cities  Mr.  Gladstone  led  all  the  others,  with  so 
large  a  majority  as  to  carry  him  back  to  the  House  of  Commons,  as  if  in 
triumph — though  he  was  only  third  on  the  general  poll  of  South  Lancashire. 

The  general  complexion  of  the  new  Parliament  was  Liberal.  The 
majority,  which  had  been  barely  a  working  majority  at  the  late  session,  was 
emphasized  by  the  gain  of  a  number  of  seats.  Of  the  657  members  of 
Parliament  returned  at  the  elections  367  were  set  down  as  Liberals,  and  290 
as  Conservatives.  The  Liberal  party,  as  the  exponent  of  those  commercial  and 
reformatory  tendencies  described  in  the  preceding  pages,  had  the  manifest 
approval  of  the  country.  The  time  had  come,  however,  when  the  leadership 
of  that  party  must  pass  from  its  late  head,  Lord  Palmerston,  to  another. 

Henry  John  Temple,  the  Viscount  Palmerston,  died  at  Brocket  Hall, 
near  Hatfield,  in  Hertfordshire,  on  the  i8th  of  October,  1865.  He  was 
within  two  days  of  completing  his  eighty-first  year.  He  was  descended 
from  the  Irish  Temples.  When  he  was  in  his  eighteenth  year  he  succeeded 
to  his  father's  title.  His  education  was  obtained  at  Harrow  School.  He 
first  appeared  in  public  life  as  a  member  of  Parliament  for  Newton,  Isle  of 
Wight,  in  the  year  1807.  In  the  Duke  of  Portland's  cabinet  he  held  the 
place  of  junior  lord  of  the  admiralty.  Afterward,  from  the  year  1808  to 
1828,  he  was  secretary  of  war.  In  politics  he  was  in  youth  a  Tory  disciple 
of  Pitt,  and  advocated  Catholic  emancipation.  At  the  age  of  forty-six  he 
accepted  the  place  of  minister  of  foreign  affairs  in  the  Whig  cabinet  of 
Earl  Grey. 

It  was  at  this  juncture  that  Palmerston  acquired  his  strong  taste — and 
some  said  his  strong  sympathy — for  continental  affairs  and  tendencies.  He 
favored  the  establishment  of  Prince  Leopold  as  King  of  the  Belgians,  and 
advocated  the  maintenance,  under  the  auspices  of  the  great  Powers,  of  the 
Ottoman  empire,  as  a  breakwater  against  the  Russian  floods.  From  the 
year  1840  to  1845  Lord  Palmerston  was  out  of  office.  In  1848  he  appeared 
again  in  the  ministry  of  Lord  John  Russell,  and  made  himself  conspicuous 
as  the  champion  of  the  revolutionary  cause  on  the  Continent.  He  regarded 
the  coup  d'etat  in  France  as  a  part  of  the  general  movement,  and  strongly 
supported  the  cause  of  Louis  Napoleon  Bonaparte — until  what  time  he  was 
virtually  dismissed  from  office. 

We  have  seen  Lord  Palmerston  again  as  home  secretary  in  the  ministry 
of  the  Earl  of  Aberdeen.  Finally,  on  the  5th  of  February,  1855,  he  became 
.Prime  Minister  of  England,  and  remained  in  that  high  office,  omitting  the 
brief  interregnum  of  the  Derby  administration  in  1858,  until  the  day  of  his 
death.  He  made  a  powerful  political  and  social  impression  upon  his 
countrymen.  He  might  almost  be  regarded  as  the  founder  of  the  Liberal 
24 


370  LIFE    AND    TIMES    UF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

party;  for  it  was  under  his  wing-  that  the  erstwhile  belligerent  factions  were 
unified  and  brought  to  a  common  purpose  under  the  name  of  Liberals. 
Lord  Palmerston  had  been  greatly  admired  by  the  majority  of  his  country- 
men and  greatly  disliked  by  the  rest.  He  was  a  man  of  strong  and  peculiar 
characteristics,  a  wit,  an  epigrammatist,  a  satirist,  almost  a  skeptic,  but  withal 
a  thorough  Englishman,  jovial  and  self-confident,  believing  in  the  attainment 
of  success,  the  champion  of  progressive  ideas,  and  the  hero  of  Punch. 

The  death  of  Lord  Palmerston  did  not  pass  without  appropriate  public 
notice.  It  fell  to  Mr.  Gladstone  in  the  House  of  Commons  to  move  an 
address  to  the  queen,  praying  her  majesty  to  order  a  monument  for  the  late 
minister  in  Westminster  Abbey.  In  the  formal  commemoration  of  the  death 
of  the  statesman  Mr.  Gladstone  said  in  the  House:  "All  who  knew  Lord 
Palmerston  knew  his  genial  temper  and  the  courage  with  which  he  entered 
into  the  debates  in  this  House;  his  incomparable  tact  and  ingenuity ;  his 
command  of  fence ;  his  delight,  his  old  English  delight,  in  a  fair  stand-up 
fight.  Yet,  notwithstanding  the  possession  of  these  powers,  I  must  say  I 
think  there  was  no  man  whose  inclination  and  whose  habit  were  more  fixed, 
so  far  as  our  discussions  were  concerned,  in  avoiding  whatever  tended  to 
exasperate,  and  in  having  recourse  to  those  means  by  which  animosity  might 
be  calmed  down.  He  had  the  power  to  stir  up  angry  passions,  but  he  chose, 
like  the  sea  god  in  the  Aineid,  rather  to  pacify ! 

'  Quos  ego — sed  fnotos  prcesiat  cotnponere  fluctus.^ 

['Whom  I — but  it  is  first  needful  to  pacify  the  perturbed  seas.'] 

That  which,  in  my  opinion,  distinguished  Lord  Palmerston's  speaking  from 
the  oratory  of  other  men,  that  which  was  its  most  remarkable  characteristic, 
was  the  degree  in  which  he  said  precisely  that  which  he  meant  to  express." 
In  concluding  his  remarks  the  speaker  emphasized  the  noble  quality  of  Lord 
Palmerston  in  refusing  to  nurse  the  anger  and  animosity  which  were  so 
frequently  the  incidents  of  public  life.  The  leader  of  the  opposition  fol- 
lowed in  a  similar  vein,  speaking  of  the  social  character  of  Lord  Palmerston 
and  of  the  enviable  tradition  of  a  great  and  generous  personality  which  he 
had  left  to  his  countrymen. 

Nor  may  we  pass  from  this  event  and  epoch  without  referring  also  to 
the  death  of  Richard  Cobden.  That  statesman  expired  in  London,  almost 
in  sight  of  the  House  of  Commons,  on  the  2d  of  April,  1865,  lacking  two 
months  of  having  completed  his  sixty-first  year.  His  fame  in  Great  Brit- 
ain and  throughout  the  world  as  a  political  economist,  as  an  advocate  of 
free  trade,  and  as  an  incorruptible  statesman  had  become  immense.  He  was 
an  explorer  in  the  domain  of  untried  reforms.  We  have  seen  him  as  the 
chief  supporter  of  the  Anti-Corn-Law  League  in  1838-46  ;  also  as  the 
unaided   negotiator   of   the    commercial   treaty  with    France ;    also   as   the 


PROGRESS    TOWARD    LIBERALISM,    AND    REJECTION    BY    OXFORD.  371 

uncompromising  friend  of  the  American  Union  in  the  day  of  our  greatest 
trials.  He  was  a  man  of  the  very  highest  abilities.  His  genius  was 
acknowledged  in  his  own  day,  and  is  now  an  unchallenged  fact  in  the  per- 
sonal history  of  the  age. 

Mr.  Cobden's  conscience  was  acute  and  mandatory.  He  seems  to  have 
had  no  ambition  beyond  the  welfare  of  his  countrymen.  In  the  first  min- 
istry of  Lord  Palmerston  the  place  of  president  of  the  Board  of  Trade  was 
offered  to  Mr.  Cobden,  but  he  refused  to  accept  the  place  on  the  ground 
that  he  could  not  support  the  foreign  policy  of  Lord  Palmerston.  When 
urged  by  a  committee  to  accept  the  place,  and  when  it  was  pointed  out  to 
him  that  Lord  John  Russell,  who  had  just  accepted  the  office  of  minister 
for  foreiofn  affairs,  had  been  as  severe  as  ever  Cobden  was  in  denouncino- 
Palmerston  and  his  policy,  Cobden  simply  replied,  "  Yes  ;  but  I  meant  ivhat 
I  said !  "  A  like  trait  of  character  was  shown  when  he  and  a  friend  were 
walking  on  a  certain  occasion  among  the  great  tombs  and  monuments  in 
Westminster  Abbey.  Cobden  was  then  fifty-two  years  old,  but  had  never 
been  in  the  Abbey  before.  The  musings  of  the  two  were  broken  by  the 
remark  of  the  friend  that,  as  he  hoped,  the  name  of  his  companion  (Mr. 
Cobden)  would  one  day  be  seen  on  these  immortal  walls.  "  I  hope  not,  I 
hope  not,"  said  Cobden,  quickly.  "  My  spirit  could  not  rest  in  peace  among 
these  men  of  war.  No,  no  ;  cathedrals  are  not  meant  to  contain  the  remains 
of  such  men  as  John  Bright  and  me." 

Still  further  was  the  character  of  this  man  illustrated  within  less  than 
two  months  of  his  death.  On  the  loth  of  February,  1865,  being  then  in  a 
greatly  enfeebled  condition,  he  received  a  letter  from  Mr.  Gladstone  speak- 
ing in  behalf  of  Lord  Palmerston,  and  offering  to  him  the  chairmanship  of 
the  Board  of  Audit,  which  was  about  to  become  vacant.  The  salary  of  the 
position  was  two  thousand  pounds  a  year,  and  the  duties,  though  highly 
responsible  and  honorable,  were  not  onerous.  Mr.  Gladstone's  letter  was 
cordial  and  sympathetic,  but  Cobden  would  not  accept.  He  gave  a  suffi- 
cient reason,  found  in  the  state  of  his  health,  which  would  not  permit  him, 
he  thought,  to  assume  the  performance  of  any  stated  and  permanent  duties. 
Then  that  peculiar  conscience  which  he  carried  came  into  play,  and  he 
added  :  "  Were  my  case  different,  still,  while  sensible  of  the  kind  intentions 
which  prompted  the  offer,  it  would  assuredly  not  be  consulting  my  welfare 
to  place  me  in  the  post  in  question  with  my  own  views  respecting  the  nature 
of  our  finances.  Believing,  as  I  do,  that  while  the  income  of  the  govern- 
ment is  derived  in  a  greater  proportion  than  in  any  other  country  from  the 
taxation  of  the  humblest  classes,  its  expenditure  is  to  the  last  degree  waste- 
ful and  indefensible,  it  would  be  almost  a  penal  appointment  to  consign  me 
for  the  remainder  of  my  life  to  the  task  of  passively  auditing  our  finance 
accounts.     I  fear  my  health  would  sicken  and  my  days  be  shortened  by  the 


372  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    CiLADSTONE. 

nauseous  ordeal.  It  will  be  better  that  I  retain  my  seat  in  Parliament  as 
long  as  I  am  able  in  any  tolerable  degree  to  perform  its  duties,  where  I  have 
at  least  the  opportunity  of  protesting,  however  unavailingly,  against  the 
government  expenditure."  There  spoke  one  of  the  most  robust  and  incor- 
ruptible natures  of  this  great  century  of  power  and  subserviency.  Would 
that  in  the  last  decade  of  it  one  other  such  voice  might  be  heard  above  the 
roar  of  place-seeking,  avarice,  greed,  and  compromise  ! 

Mr.  Cobden  gradually  sank  under  an  attack  of  bronchitis  running  into 
consumption.  There  were  little  intervals  of  delusive  improvement.  He 
went  with  his  eldest  daughter  into  Suffolk  Street,  and  there  took  his  last 
lodgings  near  the  Athenaeum  Club  and  the  House  of  Commons.  He  con- 
tinued to  perform  certain  light  duties  of  correspondence,  and  finally,  on  the 
day  of  his  death,  left  a  half-written  letter  on  his  desk.  He  was  laid  to  rest 
in  a  slope  of  pine  woods  in  the  humble  churchyard  of  Lavington,  where  he 
had  buried  his  promising  son  years  before. 

As  soon  as  Lord  Palmerston  was  gone  the  queen  sent  for  Earl  Rus- 
sell and  intrusted  to  him  the  conduct  of  her  government.  Mr.  Gladstone 
was  called  to  assume  the  leadership  of  the  House  of  Commons.  It  was 
agreed  by  his  friends  beforehand,  and  was  eagerly  remarked  by  his  political 
enemies,  that  this  position  would  be  especially  trying  to  him  on  account  of 
his  temper  and  temperament.  There  were,  indeed,  good  grounds  to  doubt, 
not  his  qualifications,  but  his  qualities  with  respect  to  the  position  to  which 
he  was  now  assigned.  We  may  agree  that  the  place  in  question  called 
rather  for  the  humor,  the  irony,  the  recklessness,  the  audacity,  and  even  the 
unscrupulous  methods  and  manners  of  a  man  such  as  Benjamin  Disraeli 
or  Lord  Palmerston  himself  than  for  the  philosophical,  urbane,  and  serious 
Gladstone,  always  in  earnest,  didactic  rather  than  paradoxical,  convincing 
rather  than  amusing.  But  the  exigency  of  party  government  made  his 
assumption  of  parliamentary  leadership  a  necessity,  and  he  came  to  his  task 
with  force  of  will,  great  abilities,  and  a  high  measure  of  success.  Not  a  year 
elapsed  until  both  friends  and  foes  acknowledged  that  the  great  finance 
minister  was  also  to  be  regarded  as  a  great  leader  of  the  House  of  Commons. 


REFORM    BILL    OF     1 866. 


CHAPTER     XXI. 
Reform  Bill  of  1866. 


07Z 


j£  have  now  arrived  at  the  parliamentary  session  of  the  year 
2866,  and  at  the  threshold  of  the  great  reform  contention  of  that 
year.  That  such  an  issue  was  at  the  very  door  was  a  fact  recog- 
nized by  all;  but  the  depth  and  vehemence  of  the  agitation 
about  to  break  on  the  country  had  not  been  anticipated. 
There  were  not  wanting  public  men  and  parliamentarians  who  had  foreseen 
and  welcomed  the  oncoming  storm.  The  question  of  a  general  electoral 
reform  had  been  openly  and  vehemently  debated  here  and  there  in  the 
recent  parliamentary  canvass.  The  advance  Liberal,  John  Stuart  Mill,  in 
one  of  his  preelection  speeches,  said  :  "  With  regard  to  reform  bills,  I  should 
vote  at  once  both  for  Mr.  Baines's  bill  and  for  Mr.  Locke  King's,  and  for 
measures  going  far  beyond  either  of  them.  I  would  open  the  suffrage  to  all 
grown  persons,  both  men  and  women,  who  can  read,  write,  and  perform  a 
sum  in  the  rule  of  three,  and  who  have  not,  within  some  small  number  of 
years,  received  parish  relief.  At  the  same  time,  utterly  abominating  all 
class  ascendency,  I  would  not  vote  for  giving  the  suffrage  in  such  a  manner 
that  any  class,  even  though  it  be  the  most  numerous,  could  swamp  all  other 
classes  taken  together.  In  the  first  place,  I  think  that  all  considerable 
minorities  in  the  country  or  in  a  locality  should  be  represented  in  propor- 
tion to  their  numbers.  I  should  be  prepared  to  support  a  measure  which 
would  give  to  the  laboring  classes  a  clear  half  of  the  national  representa- 
tion." 

We  must  here  note,  however,  the  budget  of  the  year  f866.  Mr.  Glad- 
stone on  this  appearance  again  congratulated  the  House  and  the  country 
on  the  prospect  of  a  further  reduction  of  taxes.  It  was  on  the  3d  of  May 
that  he  presented  his  annual  report.  He  said  that  the  revenue  would  war- 
rant the  hope  of  still  further  reducing  the  burdens  of  the  nation.  He  was 
glad  to  believe  that  the  disputes  now  running  high  between  the  parties 
would  not  be  evoked  or  aggravated  by  the  presentation  of  the  accounts  of 
the  nation.  He  said  that  the  surplus  for  the  fiscal  year  about  to  close  was 
not  as  large  as  that  of  the  three  preceding  years;  but  it  was  sufficient  to 
warrant  the  expectation  of  the  intended  reduction  in  taxation.  The  expend- 
iture for  the  past  year  had  been  somewhat  less  than  the  estimate,  and  the 
revenue  greater  than  he  had  calculated  by  a  million  four  hundred  and 
twenty-four  thousand  pounds. 

The  surplus  would  be  nearly  two  million  pounds.  The  revenues  of  Great 
Britain  for  the  past  two  years  had  Increased  by  a  million  and  a  quar- 
ter pounds  annually.    The  abolition  of  duties  and  taxes  made  under  his  last 


374 


LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 


annual  presentation  had  occasioned  a  loss  to  the  treasury  somewhat  in 
excess  of  his  calculations.  He  had  in  the  interim  proceeded,  however,  to 
make  an  unusual  liquidation  of  the  public  debt.  The  same  had  been 
reduced  by  nearly  two  million  pounds.  His  estimate  for  the  expenditures 
of  the  ensuing  year  was  sixty-six  million  two  hundred  and  twenty-five  thou- 
sand  pounds,  and   the   revenues    he   calculated   at  sixty-seven    million  five 


JOHN    STUART    MILL. 


hundred  and  seventy-five  thousand  pounds,  thus  providing  for  an  estimated 
surplus  of  a  million  three  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  pounds. 

The  commercial  history  of  the  government  was  most  gratifying.  The 
treaty  with  F"rance  had  nearly  trebled  the  export  trade  of  that  country. 
Similar  treaties  made  with  Belgium,  Italy,  and  the  Zollverein  Union  had 
been  productive  of  like  results.  More  recently  a  similar  treaty  had  been 
made   with    Austria.     The  general   commercial    agreement  between   Great 


REFORM    BILL    OF     1 866.  375 

Britain  and  the  continental  powers  now  was  that  no  import  duty  should  be 
charg-ed  on  British  goods  in  excess  of  twenty-five  per  cent  ad  valorem. 
Great  foreign  markets  were  thus  opened  for  British  commerce.  All  this  had 
been  obtained  by  negotiation,  and  with  only  a  slight  sacrifice  to  the  revenue 
of  the  kingdom. 

It  had  been  found  expedient  as  a  compensatory  measure  to  repeal  the 
duty  on  timber,  and  to  equalize  the  duty  on  wine  imported  in  bottles  with 
that  imported  in  casks.  The  former  repeal  had  brought  no  loss  to  the  rev- 
enue on  account  of  the  increase  in  the  consumption  of  lumber.  There  had 
been  a  loss  of  seventy-one  thousand  pounds  from  the  falling  off  in  the  duty 
on  bottled  wine.  He  was  able  to  recommend  the  abolition  of  the  duty 
on  pepper,  and  also  a  reduction  in  the  mileage  duty  on  public  conveyances, 
such  as  omnibuses  and  hacks.  The  fare  on  these  he  proposed  to  reduce  from 
a  penny  to  a  farthing  the  mile.  This  he  thought  would  enable  the  small 
proprietors  of  carriages  to  stand  on  an  equal  plane  with  the  large  managers 
of  lines.  The  losses  to  the  revenues  from  these  several  reductions  Mr. 
Gladstone  placed  at  five  hundred  and  sixty  thousand  pounds.  As  to 
the  duty  on  tea  and  the  income  tax,  he  would  recommend  the  continuation 
of  those  charges  according  to  the  present  schedule. 

The  chancellor  of  the  exchequer  then  adverted  with  much  seriousness 
to  the  question  of  the  national  debt.  American  readers  will  note  with  inter- 
est that  during  his  whole  career  Mr.  Gladstone  had  strongly  advocated  the 
reduction  and  speedy  extinction  of  the  national  debt  of  Great  Britain. 
Time  and  again  he  had  declared  that  debt  to  be  an  intolerable  mortgage  on 
the  future  prosperity  of  the  empire.  Discussing  the  question  at  this  time, 
he  called  attention  to  the  large  cessation  of  the  terminable  annuities.  These 
were  coming  within  the  reach  of  the  treasury  at  the  rate  of  about  six  hun- 
dred thousand  pounds  a  year.  He  pointed  out  the  fact  that  the  public  debt 
was  a  fluctuating  quantity,  now  diminished  and  now  increased,  according  to 
vicissitudes  in  the  revenue  and  changes  in  management  and  policy.  He  was 
convinced  that  these  fluctuations,  and  indeed  the  very  existence  of  the 
national  debt,  exercised  a  hurtful  influence,  not  only  on  the  industrial,  but 
also  on  the  social  condition  of  Great  Britain.  He  called  attention  to  the 
fact  that  the  United  States  of  America  had  begun  to  apply  their  surplus 
revenue  to  the  reduction  of  the  war  debt  of  the  nation.  He  thought  this 
ought  to  be  an  example  to  the  European  nations  with  whom  the  policy  of 
reckless  borrowino-  and  debt-makino-  had  become  a  habit. 

Mr.  Gladstone  here  branched  into  a  consideration  of  the  future  com- 
mercial prospects  of  Great  Britain.  He  said  that  for  the  present  the  nation 
had  a  commercial  preeminence  which  could  hardly  be  overestimated.  With 
thirty  millions  of  people  Great  Britain  had  as  much  commerce  as  France 
and  the  United  States  together,  with  their  population  of  seventy  millions. 


3/6  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

What  was  the  cause  of  this  striking  preponderance  of  British  commerce  ? 
It  was  based  ultimately  on  coal  mines  and  metallurgy.  Great  Britain  was 
working  her  coal  and  her  ores  to  greater  advantage  than  any  other  nation, 
and  these  industries  were  the  concrete  on  which  rested  the  whole  industrial 
and  commercial  fabric  of  the  nation. 

But  would  the  coal  and  the  minerals  of  England  hold  out  ?  That  was 
the  question.  If  the  coal  should  be  exhausted  what  should  take  its  place? 
If  somethine  else  should  be  substituted  therefor  would  not  that  somethincr 
else  be  the  discovery  and  property  of  other  nations  as  well  as  England.?  In 
that  event  how  could  the  commercial  supremacy  of  Great  Britain  be 
maintained.''  Those  who  were  expert  in  such  matters  calculated  that  in 
another  century  the  coal  mines  of  England  and  Wales  would  be  exhausted 
to  a  depth  of  four  thousand  feet  below  the  surface.  It  were  vain  to  consider 
the  question  of  economizing  the  coal  by  taxing  its  production  or  by  curtail- 
ing its  consumption  in  any  way.  Neither  could  the  exportation  of  coal  be 
hindered,  for  that  would  be  against  the  established  policy  of  the  nation. 

What  then  .f^  For  his  part  Mr.  Gladstone  thought  it  well  to  prepare  in 
the  present  da}^  of  amazing  success  and  prosperity  for  the  contingency  of  a 
hundred  years  to  come.  There  was  one  way  in  which  to  do  this,  and  that 
was  to  cancel  the  mortgage  on  the  future  of  England,  That  mortgage  was 
her  national  debt.  This  ought  to  be  extinguished.  The  chancellor  of  the 
exchequer  called  attention  to  several  methods  by  which  the  debt  of  Great 
Britain  might  be  reduced.  Whoever  is  curious  to  understand  his  particular 
suggestions  and  arguments  may  consult  the  details  of  his  recommendation 
in  the  records  of  the  House  of  Commons,  The  leading  feature  of  his  plan 
was  the  proposal  to  convert  a  portion  of  the  debt  into  terminable  annuities. 
This  part  of  the  scheme  he  presented  in  the  form  of  a  bill,  and  the  bill  was 
carried  to  its  second  reading,  when  the  parliamentary  cataclysm  of  that  year, 
resulting  in  an  overthrow  of  the  government,  came  on,  and  the  measure  was 
caught  in  midair,  to  be  whirled  about  and  dropped  by  the  winds  of  the 
o^reat  reformina  storm. 

Before  proceeding  to  the  account  of  the  greater  agitation,  however,  we 
will  here  advert  to  two  or  three  other  matters  of  intermediate  importance. 
The  Irish  question,  so  called,  thrust  itself  forward  at  the  very  opening  of  the 
session.  When  the  address  to  the  queen  was  under  consideration  one  of 
the  Irish  members  offered  an  amendment  expressing  the  deep  regret  of  the 
House  at  the  disaffection  in  Ireland,  and  declaring  that  the  troubles  in  that 
country  were  the  result  of  grave  causes  which  ought  to  be  sought  out  and 
remedied  by  the  government.  As  leader  of  the  House  Mr.  Gladstone 
must  oppose  such  a  resolution  ;  and  he  did  so  by  saying  that  the  purport  of 
the  pending  address  was  threefold  in  intent :  first,  to  announce  a  solemn 
denunciation   of  Fenianism  ;  secondly,   to   show   the    existence  of  a  public 


H 


REFORM    BILL    OF    1 866.  I']'] 

opinion  in  England  which  had  enabled  the  government  to  lay  a  strong  hand 
on  the  conspiracy  ;  and  thirdly,  to  demonstrate  the  impartial  administration 
of  law  in  both  countries.  The  speaker  said  that  there  were  acknowledged 
evils  in  Ireland  which  could  not  be  at  once  extinguished,  and  that  the  true 
policy  of  the  government  w-as  first  to  suppress  lawlessness  and  restore  order, 
and  after  that  to  consider  calmly  the  ills  with  which  the  Irish  people  were 
afflicted.  In  all  this  the  reader  may  discover  only  in  the  last  clause  a 
symptom  of  a  purpose  in  Gladstone's  mind  to  espouse  the  Irish  cause  and 
make  it  his  owm. 

This  subject,  however,  was  even  in  that  day  a  plague  spot  that  was  not 
easily  filmed  over.  The  great  Nonconformist  contingent  in  Parliament — 
much  greater  for  its  ability  than  for  numbers — was  ready  and  eager  to 
contend  at  all  times  for  the  emancipation  of  the  Irish  from  the  ecclesiastical 
tyranny  then  existing.  John  Bright  took  up  the  theme  in  the  House  and 
besought  Mr.  Gladstone  and  his  rival,  Disraeli,  to  lay  aside  their  official 
contentions  in  the  interest  of  a  greater  cause.  That  cause,  he  said,  was  the 
discontent  of  the  Irish  people.  He  did  not  doubt  that  there  was  a  just 
method  by  which  the  Irish  could  be  made  as  loyal  as  any  citizens  of  the 
empire.  It  was  the  business  of  the  government  to  find  such  method  and  to 
find  it  now. 

This  was  a  home  thrust  which  again  called  for  the  parrying  skill  of 
Gladstone.  He  did  not  think  that  Mr.  Bright  was  commissioned  to  speak 
for  the  Irish  people.  They  had  their  representatives  in  Parliament,  and 
those  representatives  were  generally  in  accord  with  the  government.  To 
this  he  added  that  the  government  would  be  ready  when  the  proper  time 
came  to  consider  the  causes  of  Irish  complaint  ;  but  for  the  present  there 
was  one  thing  to  do,  and  one  only,  and  that  was  to  vindicate  the  law  and 
restore  order.  In  this  w^ork  it  was  the  duty  of  all  to  uphold  the  ministry 
and  thus  support  the  national  authority. 

Once  more  the  question  of  the  abolition  of  taxes  for  the  support  of  the 
Church  came  up  for  consideration.  A  bill  to  this  purport  was  introduced 
by  Mr.  Hardcastle,  and  to  that  bill  Mr.  Gladstone  was  again  called  to  speak. 
He  said  that  he  would  have  to  withhold  his  assent  from  the  proposition 
before  the  House  for  the  abolition  of  the  Church  rates,  although  he  consid- 
ered the  law  by  which  those  rates  were  imposed  to  be  objectionable. 
Would  it  not  be  better  to  meet  this  difficult  question  with  a  compromise, 
under  w^hich  the  Dissenters  might  exempt  themselves  from  the  payment  of 
Church  rates  and  by  the  same  act  disclaim  the  right  to  interfere  with  the 
ecclesiastical  revenues  } 

Although  a  compromise  on  such  a  question  is  repugnant  to  the  best 
sense  of  man  it  must  frequently  be  accepted  on  the  grounds  of  expediency. 
The  British   House  of  Commons  seeks  for  nothing  more  earnestly  than  for 


378  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

the  expedient.  The  Constitution  of  Great  Britain  is  an  accretion  of 
expedients  heaped  up  for  a  thousand  years.  On  this  occasion  the  attempt 
to  add  another  was  well-nigh  successful.  Mr.  Gladstone's  proposition  to 
abolish  compulsory  Church  rates  was  at  length  accepted  as  a  substitute  and 
was  carried  through  the  second  reading ;  but,  like  its  predecessor  relative 
to  Irish  affairs,  it  was  suspended  by  the  revulsion  which  overthrew  the 
Russell  ministry. 

The  affairs  of  Europe  and  the  relation  of  Great  Britain  thereto  con- 
tinued to  obtrude  themselves  into  the  House  of  Commons.  The  outbreak 
of  the  Austro-Prussian  War  was  now  imminent,  and  a  proposition  was  made 
in  Parliament  for  an  international  conference  to  consider  and,  if  possible, 
adjust  the  alarming  controversy  in  Germany.  This  proposition  Mr.  Glad- 
stone favored.  Indeed,  his  voice  was  always  heard  against  the  spirit  and  the 
fact  of  war,  except  only  in  such  cases  as  those  in  which  he  deemed  war  to 
be  necessary  to  the  national  honor. 

In  this  instance  the  English  protest  was  without  avail.  The  war  broke 
out  with  great  fury,  and  Austria  went  quickly  to  the  wall.  Just  before  his 
retirement  from  office  Mr.  Gladstone  spoke  a  second  time  on  the  affairs  of 
Germany,  pointing  out  the  great  harm  which  had  been  done  to  that  country 
and  to  all  Europe  by  the  struggle  that  was  on.  He  held,  however,  that 
Austria,  though  defeated,  would  be  the  gainer  by  her  loss,  as  she  would  by 
the  event  of  war  be  thrown  back  to  her  historical  and  normal  place  among 
the  European  powers.  He  thought  that  even  the  loss  of  Venice  to  Austria 
would  be  on  the  whole  advantageous  to  that  empire.  He  held  that  if 
Austria  should  even  be  excluded  from  her  place  among  the  Germanic 
nations  she  would  still  have  a  great  destiny  in  the  development  of  her  terri- 
tories and  the  improvement  of  her  people.  The  war  had  had  the  effect  of 
confirming  the  emancipation  of  Italy,  and  for  that  England  might  rejoice; 
for  the  cause  of  Italy  was  dear  to  the  people  of  Great  Britain. 

The  debates  here  referred  to  extended  through  and  beyond  the  great 
reformatory  excitement  of  the  year.  The  question  of  making  a  reform  in 
the  English  representative  system,  having  its  expression  in  the  House  of 
Commons,  came  on  in  full  force  in  the  early  part  of  this  year.  It  was  fore- 
shadowed in  the  address  of  her  majesty.  That  utterance  contained  not 
indeed  a  distinct  and  emphatic  promise  of  a  reform  in  the  system  of  parlia- 
mentary representation  and  the  franchise,  but  was  rather  a  mild  deliverance 
in  that  direction. 

It  fell  to  Mr.  Gladstone  to  present  and  defend  the  governmental  meas- 
ure in  fulfillment  of  his  pledge.  He  accordingly  prepared  the  Reform  Bill 
of  1866.  In  presenting  this  measure  in  the  House  of  Commons  he  called 
attention  to  the  history  of  the  reformatory  tendency  as  far  back  as  1832, 
The  bill   which   he   proposed   contained   several    provisions,  but   the   most 


REFORM    BILL    OF     1 866.  379 

important  of  all  was  that  relating  to  the  right  of  suffrage  in  Great  Britain, 
and  to  the  extension  of  the  same  to  a  large  class  of  new  electors.  He 
thoLior-ht  that,  in  consideration  of  the  brief  time  in  which  Parliament  jiiiist 
consider  and  dispose  of  the  measure  it  now  proposed,  it  would  be  better  to 
limit  the  attention  of  the  House  to  the  Franchise  Bill  only,  leaving  the 
remainder  for  future  consideration. 

Mr.  Gladstone  then  proceeded  to  explain  the  measure  which  he  pro- 
posed. He  said  that  it  was  the  purpose  of  the  government  to  create  in  the 
counties  an  occupation  franchise,  covering  all  those  householdings  valued  at 
rentals  between  fourteen  pounds  and  fifty  pounds  a  year.  The  present  min- 
imum was  fifty  pounds.  The  extension  of  the  suffrage  downward  to  house- 
holders paying  a  rental  of  fourteen  pounds  would  add  a  hundred  and 
seventy-one  thousand  electors.  This  was  not  all.  The  measure  extended 
to  the  counties  the  same  electoral  rights  which  now  arose  under  the  provi- 
sion which  leaseholders  and  copyholders  enjoyed  in  the  boroughs  entitling 
them  to  votes  in  the  counties. 

The  next  provision  extended  the  right  of  suffrage  to  all  citizens  who, 
whether  in  county  or  town,  should  within  two  years  have  a  deposit  of  fifty 
pounds  in  savings  banks.  This  provision  would  add  about  fifteen  thousand 
voters  to  the  present  list.  Another  feature  of  the  bill  was  to  place  "  com- 
pound householders"  on  an  equality  with  other  taxpayers.  The  present 
clause  relative  to  taxpaying,  as  the  same  existed  in  the  Reform  Act,  should 
be  abolished,  whereby  about  twenty-five  thousand  additional  voters  would 
be  enfranchised.  Another  clause  extended  the  riorht  of  lodgers  under  cer- 
tain  conditions.  Whoever  had  apartments  worth  ten  pounds  a  year,  exclu- 
sive of  the  furniture,  should  be  entitled  to  the  suffrage.  The  present 
restriction  with  reo^ard  to  registration  for  residence  at  the  time  of  votine 
should  be  annulled.  Persons  employed  in  the  government  yards  should  be 
enfranchised. 

Altogether  the  chancellor  of  the  exchequer  thought  there  would  be 
added,  under  the  various  provisions  of  the  bill,  not  fewer  than  four  hundred 
thousand  voters  to  the  present  list.  The  speaker  argued  and  defended  the 
various  propositions  here  presented  with  great  ability  ;  nor  might  anyone 
at  this  stage  of  the  proceedings  anticipate  anything  other  than  a  prosperous 
issue  for  the  measure.  Mr.  Gladstone,  if  we  may  judge  from  his  tone,  had 
little  apprehension  of  the  confusion  that  was  presently  to  come.  In  closing 
his  address  he  referred  to  the  possibility  that  the  bill  might  not  be  accept- 
able to  the  House,  but  at  the  same  time  urged  that  if  there  should  be  an 
adverse  vote  he  hoped  it  would  be  upon  a  plain  and  direct  issue.  He  dep- 
recated any  confusion  in  the  question  now  pending. 

Referring  to  the  vote  about  to  be  taken,  Mr.  Gladstone  said  :  "  I  trust 
it  will  be  taken  upon  the  question  whether  there  is  or  is  not  to  be  an  enfran- 


380  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

chisement  downward,  if  it  is  to  be  taken  at  all.  We  have  felt  that  to  carry 
enfranchisement  above  the  present  line  was  essential;  essential  to  character, 
essential  to  credit,  essential  to  usefulness ;  essential  to  the  character  and 
credit  not  merely  of  the  government,  not  merely  of  the  political  party  by 
which  it  has  the  honor  to  be  represented,  but  of  this  House,  and  of  the 
successive  Parliaments  and  governments,  who  all  stand  pledged  with  respect 
to  this  question  of  the  representation.  We  cannot  consent  to  look  upon 
this  large  addition,  considerable  although  it  may  be,  to  the  political  power 
of  the  working  classes  of  this  country,  as  if  it  were  an  addition  fraught  with 
mischief  and  with  danger.  We  cannot  look,  and  we  hope  no  man  will  look, 
upon  it  as  some  Trojan  horse  approaching  the  walls  of  the  sacred  city,  and 
filled  with  armed  men  bent  upon  ruin,  plunder,  and  conflagration.  We  can- 
not join  in  comparing  it  with  the  monstruvi  infelix;  we  cannot  say  : 

"  '  Scandit  fatalis  machijux  muros, 
Fivta  ar/nis,  medicBque  f/iinatis  illabitur  urbi' 

['The  fatal  machine,  pregnant  with  armed  men. 
Breaches  the  walls,  and  threateningly  slips  into  the  heart  of  the  city. '] 

"  I  believe  that  those  persons  whom  we  ask  you  to  enfranchise  ought 
rather  to  be  welcomed  as  you  would  welcome  recruits  to  your  army,  or 
children  to  your  family.  We  ask  you  to  give  within  what  you  consider  to 
be  the  just  limits  of  prudence  and  circumspection  ;  but,  having  once  deter- 
mined those  limits,  to  give  with  an  ungrudging  hand.  Consider  what  you 
can  safely  and  justly  afford  to  do  in  admitting  new  subjects  and  citizens 
within  the  pale  of  the  parliamentary  constitution;  and,  having  so  considered 
it,  do  not,  I  beseech  you,  perform  the  act  as  if  you  were  compounding  with 
danger  and  misfortune.  Do  it  as  if  you  were  conferring  a  boon  that  will 
be  felt  and  reciprocated  in  grateful  attachment.  Give  to  those  persons  new 
interests  in  the  Constitution,  new  interests  which,  by  the  beneficent  processes 
of  the  law  of  nature  and  of  providence,  shall  beget  in  them  new  attachment ; 
for  the  attachment  of  the  people  to  the  throne,  the  institutions,  and  the  laws 
under  which  they  live  is,  after  all,  more  than  gold  and  silver,  or  more  than 
fleets  and  armies,  at  once  the  strength,  the  glory,  and  the  safety  of  the  land.'' 

The  sequel  to  the  introduction  of  the  Franchise  Bill  well  illustrates  the 
peculiarities  of  government  by  party.  Such  government  always  exhibits  to 
us  the  retardation  of  progress  by  factional  interests.  Parties,  like  carpets, 
have  their  selvages.  There  is  always  along  the  edge  a  raveling  of  self- 
interest,  tending  to  raggedness.  The  party  leader  can  rarely  count  with 
certainty  upon  the  absolute  solidarity  of  his  column.  In  the  present  in- 
stance the  great  body  of  the  Liberals  stood  firmly  in  support  of  the  Glad- 
stonian  measure  ;  but  there  were  soon  to  be  heard  ominous  mutterings  of 
defection  in  the  ranks. 

Scarcely  had  the  debates  begun  when  Mr.  Horsman,  a  professed  Liberal, 


REFORM    BILL    OF     1 866.  38 1 

arose  and  declared  his  opposition  mioto  to  the  pending  measure.  This  note 
of  alarm  might  have  been  disregarded  but  for  the  similar  strain  of  other 
speakers  of  greater  influence  and  abilities.  Mr.  Robert  Lowe,  destined  him- 
self after  two  years  to  become  chancellor  of  the  exchequer,  broke  out  in 
bitter  denunciation  of  the  bill.  Indeed,  it  was  on  this  occasion  that  Mr. 
Lowe  made  his  reputation,  much  in  the  manner  of  Disraeli  in  his  famous 
attack  on  Sir  Robert  Peel. 

The  speaker  was  by  no  means  an  orator.  His  manner  was  without 
grace  or  elegance.  He  was  a  tall,  angular  man,  suffering  from  myopia  to 
such  an  extent  that  he  was  obliged  to  hold  his  notes  almost  against  his 
nose.  Besides,  his  invective,  rising  ever  to  the  verge  of  personality,  was  in 
many  parts  excessive  and  unreasonable.  But  Mr.  Lowe  was  thoroughly  in 
earnest  and  thoroughly  angry.  Whatever  may  have  been  his  motives,  he 
attacked  the  proposition  before  the  House  with  an  ability  whicli  first  aston- 
ished and  then  bewildered  the  members.  The  Conservatives  applauded 
him  to  the  echo,  and  the  enthusiasm  spread  into  the  Liberal  ranks.  The 
House  really  became  a  surging  sea,  in  which  the  opposing  currents  ran  to- 
gether and  broke  themselves  into  foam. 

If  the  opposition  was  elated  over  this  episode  the  friends  of  the  govern- 
ment were  alarmed  and  confused  by  the  suddenness  and  success  of  the 
onset.  Mr.  Lowe  gave  utterance  to  some  of  his  opinions  in  this  manner  : 
"  You  have  had  the  opportunity  of  knowing  some  of  the  constituencies  of 
this  country,  and  I  ask  if  you  want  venality,  ignorance,  drunkenness,  and 
the  means  of  intimidation  ;  if  you  want  impulsive,  unreflecting,  and  violent 
people,  where  will  you  go  to  look  for  them  ?  To  the  top,  or  to  the  bottom  ? 
It  is  ridiculous  to  blink  the  fact  that  since  the  Reform  Act  great  compe- 
tition has  prevailed  among  the  voters  of  between  twenty  pounds  and  ten 
pounds  rental  ;  the  ten-pound  lodging  and  beer-house  keepers.  .  .  .  We 
know  what  sort  of  persons  live  in  these  small  houses  ;  we  have  all  had  ex- 
perience of  them  under  the  name  of  freemen,  and  it  would  be  a  good  thing 
if  they  were  disfranchised  altogether." 

Then  referring  to  Mr.  Gladstone's  rather  stale  Vergilian  quotation 
about  the  wooden  horse,  Mr.  Lowe  continued  :  "It  may  be  that  we  are 
destined  to  avoid  this  enormous  danger  with  which  we  are  confronted,  and 
not — to  use  the  language  of  my  right  honorable  friend — to  compound  with 
danger  and  misfortune  ;  but  it  may  be  otherwise,  and  all  that  I  can  say  is 
that  if  my  right  honorable  friend  does  succeed  in  carrying  this  measure 
through  Parliament,  when  the  passions  and  interests  of  the  day  are  gone 
by  I  do  not  envy  him  his  retrospect.  I  covet  not  a  single  leaf  of  the  laurels 
that  may  encircle  his  brow.  I  do  not  envy  him  his  triumph.  His  be  the 
glory  of  carrying  it  ;  mine  of  having  to  the  utmost  of  my  poor  ability  re- 
sisted it." 


382  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

As  for  Mr.  Horsman,  that  gentleman  denounced  the  speech  of  the 
chancellor  of  the  exchequer  as  being  another  bid  for  power,  another  promise 
made  to  be  broken,  another  political  fraud  and  parliamentary  juggle.  But 
it  happened  that  both  Mr.  Lowe  and  Mr.  Horsman  were  vulnerable  in  the 
position  which  they  occupied.  It  was  known  that  both  were  discontented 
with  the  honors  which  they  had  received — that  they  were  aspirants  for  what 
had  not  yet  come,  that  they  had  grievances,  and  might  therefore  be  regarded 
as  members  of  the  genus  Pessiinisticum. 

John  Bright,  thoroughly  aroused  at  the  Liberal  defection,  came  back 
at  the  gentlemen  who  had  just  spoken  with  a  retort  which  struck  the  enemy 
like  a  ball  of  hot  pitch,  never  to  be  removed.  There  came  suddenly  into 
his  mind  the  vision  of  the  affair  described  in  the  twenty-second  chapter  of 
First  Samuel.  King  David  "  escaped  to  the  cave  of  Adullam  :  and  when 
his  brethren  and  all  his  father's  house  heard  it,  they  went  down  thither  to 
him.  And  every  one  that  was  in  distress,  and  every  one  that  was  in  debt, 
and  every  one  that  was  discontented,  gathered  themselves  unto  him."  This 
was  too  good  not  to  be  siezed  upon  by  Mr.  Bright.  He  said  that  Mr. 
Horsman  was  the  first  member  of  the  new  Parliament  who  had  shown  his 
wounds  and  uttered  his  griefs.  "  He  has  retired,"  said  Mr.  Bright,  "  into 
what  may  be  called  his  political  Cave  of  Adulla77t,  to  which  he  has  invited 
everyone  who  is  in  distress  and  everyone  who  is  discontented.  He  has 
long  been  anxious  to  found  a  party  in  this  House,  and  there  is  scarcely  a 
member  at  this  end  of  the  House  who  is  able  to  address  us  with  effect,  or 
to  take  much  part,  whom  he  has  not  tried  to  bring  over  to  his  party  and 
his  cabal.  At  last  he  has  succeeded  in  hooking  the  right  honorable  the 
member  for  Calme  [meaning  Mr.  Lowe].  I  know  it  was  the  opinion  many 
years  ago  of  a  member  of  the  cabinet  that  two  men  could  make  a  party  ; 
and  when  a  party  is  formed  of  two  men  so  amiable,  so  genial,  as  both  of 
those  right  honorable  gentlemen,  we  may  hope  to  see,  for  the  first  time  in 
Parliament,  a  party  perfectly  harmonious  and  distinguished  by  a  mutual 
and  unbroken  trust.  But  there  is  one  great  difficulty.  It  is  very  much  like 
the  case  of  the  Scotch  terrier  that  was  so  covered  with  hair  that  you  could 
not  tell  which  was  the  head  and  which  was  the  tail." 

This  retort  was  sufficient  without  doubt  to  crush  any  ordinary  defec- 
tion. In  an  argumentative  way  Mr.  Bright  added:  "  I  said  at  the  beginning 
that  I  did  not  rise  to  defend  the  bill.  I  rose  for  the  purpose  of  explaining 
it.  It  is  not  the  bill  which,  if  I  had  been  consulted,  I  should  have  recom- 
mended. If  I  had  been  a  minister  it  is  not  the  bill  which  I  should  have 
consented  to  present  to  the  House.  I  think  it  is  not  adequate  to  the  occa- 
sion and  that  its  concessions  are  not  sufficient.  But  I  know  the  difficulties 
under  which  ministers  labor,  and  I  know  the  disinclination  of  Parliament  to 
do   much   in   the  direction  of  this  question.     I   shall    give    it    my    support 


REFORM    BILL    OF    1 866.  383 

because,  as  far  as  it  goes,  it  is  a  simple  and  honest  measure,  and  because  I 
believe,  if  it  becomes  law,  it  will  give  some  solidity  and  duration  to  every- 
thing that  is  good  in  the  Constitution  and  to  everything  that  is  noble  in 
the  character  of  the  people  of  these  realms." 

By  this  time  the  parliamentary  winds  were  blowing  high.  If  the 
speeches  of  Lowe  and  Horsman  had  evoked  great  applause  that  of  Bright 
brought  enthusiasm  and  uproarious  laughter.  His  reference  to  the  cave  of 
Adullam  took  without  measure.  Instantly  the  quick  wit  of  honorable 
members  fastened  on  Mr.  Lowe  and  Mr.  Horsman  and  their  fellow  in  in- 
surrection the  name  of  Adullamites,  which  became  ever  afterward  their 
political  designation,  and  which  has  passed  into  all  the  dictionaries  and 
encyclopedias  of  the  world.  It  is  a  sign  of  real  agitation  and  forward 
movement  that  such  names  come  into  play.  Political  phraseology  is  a  hint 
of  something  more  imporfant  than  either  politics  or  politicians;  it  points  to 
progress  and  change  in  institutions. 

Shortly  afterward  another  expression,  this  time  exployed  by  Mr. 
Gladstone  himself,  was  caught  up  and  borne  along  the  floods,  visible  from 
afar.  Mr.  Gladstone  had  been  importuned  to  bring  forward  the  whole 
scheme  of  reform,  including  the  redistribution,  or,  as  we  would  say,  the  re- 
apportionment, of  the  parliamentary  seats.  This  he  was  asked  to  do,  and 
.not  to  insist  on  pressing  the  single  measure  couched  in  the  Franchise  Bill. 
Speaking  on  this  subject,  Lord  Robert  Montague  had  referred  to  Mr.  George 
William  Villiers  as  a  pretended  friend  of  the  workingmen.  Mr.  Gladstone, 
with  more  than  his  usual  severity,  replied,  saying  that  "if  the  workingmen 
whom  the  noble  lord  and  others  seemed  to  dread  as  an  invading  and 
destroying  army,  instead  of  regarding  them  as  their  ow7i  flesh  and  blood, 
were  introduced  into  the  House,  they  would  set  him  an  example  of  both 
courtesy  and  good  breeding." 

This  was  sufficiently  caustic;  but  the  phrase  "own  flesh  and  blood" 
was  snatched  from  Gladstone's  remark  by  Sir  Edward  Bulwer-Lytton, 
wrested  from  its  purpose,  and  turned  effectively,  if  not  truly,  against  its 
author.  The  measure  proposed  by  Mr.  Gladstone  was  not  radical  and 
complete.  It  was  an  extension  of  the  right  of  suffrage,  but  it  by  no  means 
reached  to  manhood  or  universal  suffrage.  On  the  contrary,  it  was  only  a 
feeble  concession,  by  which  fewer  than  a  half  million  voters  would  be  added 
to  the  entire  lists  in  Great  Britain. 

These  facts  gave  Lord  Lytton  a  great  opportunity.  "  What,"  said  he, 
"  has  the  right  honorable  gentleman  [meaning  Mr.  Gladstone]  to  say  to  the 
millions  who  will  ask  him  one  day  :  '  Are  we  an  invading  army  }  Are  we  not 
fellow-Christians  }  Are  we  not  your  own  flesh  and  blood  } '  Does  he  think 
it  will  be  answer  enough  to  give  that  kind  of  modified  opinion  which  he  put 
forth  last  night,  and  to   say,  '  W^ell,  that  is  very  true.     For  my  own  part,  in 


384  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

my  individual  capacity,  I  cannot  see  that  there  is  any  danger  of  admitting 
)-ou  ;  but  still,  you  know,  it  is  wise  to  proceed  gradually.  A  seven-pound 
voter  is  real  flesh  and  blood.  But  you  are  only  gradual  flesh  and  blood. 
Read  Darwin  on  the  origin  of  species  and  learn  that  you  are  fellow- 
Christians  in  an  imperfect  state  of  development  .f* '  " 

The  refusal  of  Mr.  Gladstone  to  bring  forward  his  whole  scheme  at 
once  tended  to  aggravate  the  opposition,  and  to  increase  the  importance  of 
the  Adullamite  continoent.  The  leader  of  the  House  had  said  that  he 
would  present  his  whole  plan  of  reform  after  the  Franchise  Bill  had  passed 
the  second  reading.  This  did  not  satisfy.  Other  supporters  of  the  govern- 
ment, as  well  as  the  recalcitrant  Lowe  and  Horsman,  drew  back  from  sup- 
porting a  part  of  a  thing,  not  understanding  the  whole  of  it.  Of  this  kind 
were  the  Earl  Grosvenor  and  the  Marquis  of  Westminster,  both  of  whom 
put  themselves  in  the  attitude  of  standing  with  the  Adullamites. 

Before  the  second  reading  could  be  called  the  Easter  recess  of 
Parliament  occurred,  and  the  agitation,  central  in  the  House  of  Com- 
mons, went  out,  like  a  refluent  wave,  over  all  the  country.  Englishmen 
were  more  concerned  about  the  Franchise  Bill  than  they  were  about  their 
Easter  ees's  and  flowers.  Public  demonstrations  in  the  EnofHsh  manner 
swelled  up  spontaneously  here  and  there.  The  war  was  on,  and  the 
Liberals  found  that  they  must  fight  a  hot  battle  or  be  beaten  on  their  own 
proposition. 

One  of  the  popular  demonstrations  was  at  Liverpool,  at  which  Mr. 
Gladstone  spoke  to  thousands  of  people.  There  were  also  present  on  the 
occasion  the  Duke  of  Argyle,  with  his  popular  sympathies,  and  Mr.  George 
Joachim  Goschen,  just  then  rising  to  parliamentary  fame.  The  chief 
interest  centered,  of  course,  in  Mr.  Gladstone  and  his  speech.  In  beginning 
he  declared  his  purpose  to  abide  by  the  Franchise  Bill,  to  stand  with  it  or 
fall  with  it ;  and  hereupon  the  audience  sprang  up  with  a  long-continued 
chorus  of  cheers.  Continuing,  Mr.  Gladstone  said  :  "  Having  produced  this 
measure,  founded  in  the  spirit  of  moderation,  we  hope  to  support  it  with 
decision.  It  is  not  in  our  power  to  secure  the  passing  of  the  measure  ;  that 
rests  more  with  you,  and  more  with  those  whom  you  represent,  and  of 
whom  you  are  a  sample,  than  it  does  with  us.  Still,  we  have  a  great  responsi- 
bility and  are  conscious  of  it,  and  we  do  not  intend  to  flinch  from  it.  We 
stake  ourselves — we  stake  our  existence  as  a  government — and  we  also 
stake  our  political  character  on  the  adoption  of  the  bill  in  its  main 
provisions.  You  have  a  right  to  expect  from  us  that  we  should  tell  you 
what  we  mean,  and  that  the  trumpet  which  it  is  our  business  to  blow  should 
give  forth  no  uncertain  sound.  Its  sound  has  not  been,  and  I  trust  will  not 
be,  uncertain.  We 'have  passed  the  Rubicon — we  have  broken  the  bridge 
and  burned  the  boats  behind  us.     We  have  advisedly  cut  off  the  means  of 


REFORM    BILL    OF     1 866.  385 

retreat,  and  having  done  this  we  hope  that,  as  far  as  time  has  yet  permitted, 
we  have  done  our  duty  to  the  crown  and  to  the  nation." 

It  is  cheering  in  the  retrospect,  looking  into  the  turmoil  and  commo- 
tion of  the  period  and  noticing  how  hardly  England  was  advancing  but  a 
little  in  the  direction  of  universal  suffrage,  to  hear  the  stentorian  voice  of 
John  Bright  across  the  swell.  In  Birmingham  there  was  a  meeting  rela- 
tively as  enthusiastic  as  that  at  Liverpool.  Mr.  Bright,  who  could  not 
attend,  sent  a  letter  to  be  read,  of  the  quality  of  which  the  reader  may  judge 
from  extracts.  "  Parliament,"  said  he,  "  is  never  hearty  for  reform  or  for  any 
good  measure.  It  hated  the  Reform  Bill  of  1831  and  1832.  It  does  not 
like  the  Franchise  Bill  now  upon  its  table.  It  is  to  a  large  extent  the 
offspring  of  landed  power  in  the  counties  and  of  tumult  and  corruption  in 
the  boroughs,  and  it  would  be  strange  if  such  a  Parliament  were  in  favor  of 
freedom  and  of  an  honest  representation  of  the  people.  But,  notwith- 
standing such  a  Parliament,  this  bill  will  pass  if  Birmingham  and  other 
towns  do  their  duty."  There  spoke  the  true  democrat,  who  might  have 
been  an  American  statesman  in  our  best  days. 

The  writer  went  on  to  allege  that  the  opposition  which  had  burst  out 
against  the  extension  of  the  franchise  was  "a  dirty  conspiracy."  "What," 
said  he  in  his  bluff  manner,  "  should  be  done  and  must  be  done  under  these 
circumstances  }  You  know  what  your  fathers  did  thirty-four  years  ago,  and 
you  know  the  result.  The  men  who,  in  every  speech  they  utter,  insult  the 
workingmen,  describing  them  as  a  multitude  given  up  to  ignorance  and  vice, 
will  be  the  first  to  yield  when  the  popular  will  is  loudly  and  resolutely 
expressed.  If  Parliament  Street,  from  Charing  Cross  to  the  venerable 
Abbey,  were  filled  with  men  seeking  a  reform  bill,  as  it  was  two  years  ago 
with  men  come  to  do  honor  to  an  illustrious  Italian,  these  slanderers  of 
their  countrymen  would  learn  to  be  civil,  if  they  did  not  learn  to  love  free- 
dom." Mr.  Bright  went  on  to  urge  the  people  of  Manchester  to  organize, 
to  hold  public  meetings  and  prepare  petitions,  as  men  should  do  who  live  in 
a  free  country,  having  representative  institutions,  and  being  determined  to 
partake  in  some  measure  of  that  representation  and  to  be  free. 

The  event  showed  that  the  opponents  of  the  franchise  were  hard 
pressed  by  the  rising  people.  Mr.  Lowe,  in  particular,  was  singled  out  and 
brought  to  book  for  his  utterances  respecting  the  character  of  the  under 
man.  He  tried  to  explain  that  he  had  not  meant  to  ascribe  a  bad  character 
to  all  of  those  who  had  been  recently  admitted  to  the  rights  of  suffrage. 
He  had  described  only  a  worse  part  of  the  new  voters. 

With  the  reassembling  of  the  House  after  Easter  there  was  one  ques- 
tion   uppermost   in   the   minds  of  all.     The  second  reading  of  the  bill  was 
pending.     Mr.    Gladstone    had,    in    American    phrase,    been    handling    the 
Adullamites  without  crloves.     On   the   seventh   evening  of  the  debate  Mr. 
25 


386  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

Lowe  returned  to  his  task.  He  had  prepared  himself  with  all  manner  of 
panoply  and  with  every  kind  of  weapon  that  he  was  able  to  wield.  It 
appears  that  the  severe  treatment  to  which  he  had  been  subjected  aroused 
his  animosity  to  the  highest  pitch.  He  spoke  for  two  and  a  half  hours  in  a 
manner  to  call  out  the  constant  applause  of  the  opposition,  and  it  could  but 
be  noted  that  the  approval  extended  over  alarmingly  into  the  ministerial 
benches. 

Mr.  Lowe  declared  that  the  pending  measure  was  based  on  false  prin- 
ciples, that  it  was  promoted  in  the  House  by  political  coercion  and  outside 
of  the  House  by  the  trades  unions  and  a  rampant  democracy  that  if  loosed 
would  prove  fatal  to  the  English  Constitution.  He  assailed  the  bill  because 
it  implied  the  fitness  of  the  poorer  classes  to  exercise  the  right  of  suffrage. 
It  admitted  that  their  claim  to  do  so  was  indefeasible.  The  measure,  he 
said,  was  calculated  to  appease  democracy,  but  not  to  promote  good  govern- 
ment. He  showed,  or  tried  to  show,  that  Mr.  Gladstone's  scheme  signified 
not  the  enfranchisement  of  two  hundred  thousand  men,  but  the  final  enfran- 
chisement of  all.  Then  he  rane  the  chancres  on  Mr.  Gladstone's  alleo-ation 
that  the  poor  were  "our  own  flesh  and  blood — fellow-citizens  and  Christians 
— and  fathers  of  families."  He  then  referred  to  the  death  of  Lord  Palmer- 
ston,  and  declared  that  all  the  remaining  members  of  the  cabinet  had  cast 
their  prudence  and  statesmanship  into  the  grave  of  that  statesman.  He 
charged  the  Liberal  leaders  with  having  carried  over  the  great  mass  of  their 
party  and  laid  them  at  the  feet  of  the  member  for  Birmingham  (meaning 
Mr.  Bright). 

The  Liberals  were  already,  continued  Mr.  Lowe,  cheek  by  jowl  with 
men  and  principles  with  whom  and  with  which  they  would  lately  have 
scorned  to  be  in  company.  Those  who,  belonging  in  the  Liberal  ranks, 
stood  by  the  old  landmarks  were  now  left  like  sheep  in  the  wilderness. 
Those  who  had  been  faithful  to  the  principles  of  the  party  were  now  charged 
with  treason  and  conspiracy.  It  was  alleged,  said  the  speaker,  that  Liberals 
were  bound  to  support  Lord  Russell.  "  I,"  said  he,  "dispute  that.  I  never 
served  under  him.  I  have  served,  unfortunately,  for  a  little  less  than  ten 
years  under  two  prime  ministers,  one  being  Lord  Aberdeen  and  the  other 
Lord  Palmerston.  Both  these  governments  Lord  Russell  joined ;  both 
these  governments  he  abandoned  ;  and  both  these  governments  he  assisted 
to  destroy.  I  owe  him  no  allegiance.  I  am  not  afraid  of  the  people  of  this 
country  ;  they  have  shown  remarkable  good  sense — remarkable  in  contrast 
with  the  harangues  that  have  been  addressed  to  them. 

"Nor  am  I,"  continued  the  speaker,  "afraid  of  those  who  lead  them. 
Demagogues  are  the  commonplaces  of  history  ;  they  are  found  everywhere 
where  there  is  popular  commotion.  They  have  all  a  family  likeness.  Their 
names  float  lightly  on  the  stream  of  time;  they  finally  contrive  to  be  handed 


REFORM    BILL    OF     1 866.  387 

down  somehow,  for  they  are  as  Httle  to  be  regarded  for  themselves  as  the 
foam  which  rides  on  the  top  of  the  stormy  wave  and  bespatters  the  rock  it 
cannot  shake;  but  what  I  do  fear — what  fills  me  with  gloomiest  misgivings 
— is  when  I  see  a  number  of  gentlemen  of  rank,  property,  and  intelligence 
carried  away  without  even  being  convinced  or  even  overpersuaded  to  sup- 
port a  policy  which  many  of  them  in  their  hearts  detest  and  abhor.  Mon- 
archies exist  by-  loyalty,  aristocracies  by  honor,  popular  assemblies  by  political 
virtue.  When  these  things  begin  to  fail  it  is  in  their  loss,  and  not  in  comets, 
eclipses,  and  earthquakes,  that  we  are  to  look  for  the  portents  that  herald 
the  fall  of  States." 

In  this  flight  Mr.  Lowe  reached  the  height  of  his  argument  and  outcry. 
There  could  be  no  doubt  as  to  its  effectiveness.  He  went  on  in  full  tide  to 
say  that,  though  he  could  not  agree  with  the  chancellor  of  the  exchequer  in 
the  measure  which  he  proposed,  or  with  any  part  of  it,  there  was,  happily, 
one  common  ground  left  them,  and  that  was  the  second  ^-Enezd.  "  My  right 
honorable  friend,"  said  Mr.  Lowe,  "  returned  again  to  the  poor  old  Trojan 
horse.  I  will  add  one  more  to  the  excerpts  from  the  story  of  that  noble 
animal,  after  which  I  will  promise  to  turn  him  out  to  grass  for  the  remainder 
of  his  life.  The  passage  to  which  I  wish  to  call  attention  presents  a  sketch 
of  the  army,  and  not  only  of  the  army,  but  of  the  general  also  : 

"  '  The  fatal  horse  pours  forth  the  human  tide, 
Insulting  Sinon  flings  his  firebrands  wide  ; 
The  gates  are  burnt,  the  ancient  rampart  falls. 
And  swarming  myriads  climb  its  crumbling  walls.' 

"I  have  now  traced  as  well  as  I  could  what  I  believe  would  be  the  nat- 
ural result  of  a  measure  which  seems  to  my  poor  imagination  destined  to 
absorb  and  destroy,  one  after  the  other,  those  institutions  which  have  made 
England  what  she  has  hitherto  been  and  what  I  believe  no  other  country  ever 
was  or  ever  will  be.  Surely  the  heroic  work  of  so  many  centuries,  the  match- 
less achievements  of  so  many  wise  heads  and  strong  hands  deserve  a  nobler 
consummation  than  to  be  sacrificed  to  revolutionary  passion  or  to  the 
maudlin  enthusiasm  of  humanity.  But  if  we  do  fall  we  shall  fall  deservedly. 
Unconstrained  by  any  external  force,  not  beaten  down  by  any  intestine 
calamity.  In  the  plethora  of  wealth  and  the  surfeit  of  our  too  exuberant 
prosperity  we  are  about,  with  our  own  rash  and  unconstrained  hands,  to 
pluck  down  on  our  own  heads  the  venerable  temple  of  our  liberty  and  our 
laws.  History  may  record  other  catastrophes  as  signal  and  disastrous,  but 
none  more  wanton  and  more  disgraceful." 

None  could  say  that  this  was  not  a  splendid  and  effective  tirade  against 
the  measure  of  the  government.  There  have  been  few  such  passages  in  the 
history  of  the  House  of  Commons.     Not  more  than  a  dozen  instances  could 


388  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

be  produced  of  so  extreme  and  powerful  an  attack.  Mr.  Lowe  seemed  to 
appeal  to  everything  that  was  English,  and  to  stand  against  what  must 
appear  for  the  moment  to  have  been  the  utterly  un-English  bill  before  the 
House  of  Commons.  Certain  contingencies  in  parliamentary  history  have 
brought  out  just  such  brilliant  and  evanescent  bursts  of  eloquent  assault  as 
that  of  Mr.  Lowe,  but  not  many  others  have  surpassed  his  effort.  ]Mr. 
Disraeli  himself,  in  taking  up  the  debate,  felt  as  much,  and  it  was  conceded 
that  his  effort,  though  by  no  means  tame,  was  not  up  to  the  level  of  the  great 
Adullamite  who  had  preceded  him. 

The  leader  of  the  opposition  began  by  a  fling  at  the  Franchise  Bill,  in 
asserting  that  it  was  "based  on  American  principles."  He  denied  that  the 
Conservative  party  was  justly  chargeable  with  unfairness  with  respect  to 
the  franchise.  The  House  of  Commons  ouQ^ht  to  remember  that  it  was 
not  the  House  of  the  People.  The  body  stood  for  political  order,  and  did 
not  stand  for  a  multitude.  In  the  matter  of  estimating  the  part  which 
workingmen  should  bear  in  the  State,  which  part  the  speaker  declared  he 
did  not  begrudge  to  them,  the  House  ought  to  proceed  according  to  the 
spirit  of  the  English  Constitution.  He  then  proceeded  to  attack  Mr.  Glad 
stone's  record  on  the  question  of  reform,  and  to  show  that  his  history  on 
that  subject  for  the  full  span  of  a  lifetime  was  wholly  inconsistent  with  the 
part  which  he  was  now  performing  in  Parliament  and  before  the  nation. 

It  was  to  all  this  outcry  and  array  of  talent  that  Mr.  Gladstone  must 
now  reply.  He  must  do  it  well  or  else  be  defeated.  It  was  manifest  from 
the  commotion  of  the  House  that  the  elements  were  revolutionary.  The 
chancellor  of  the  exchequer  began  his  speech  with  an  allusion  to  the  state- 
ment of  Mr.  Lowe  that  his  (Gladstone's)  words  at  Liverpool  had  been  of  a 
character  to  disparage  members  of  the  House.  It  was  not  true  that  they 
bore  that  character.  He  begged  leave  to  remind  his  right  honorable  friend 
(meaning  Mr,  Lowe)  of  a  passage  from  Aristophanes.  That  author  makes 
one  of  his  characters,  in  addressing  an  audience,  to  say,  "  But  now,  my  good 
Athenians,  pray  recollect,  I  am  not  speaking  of  the  city,  I  am  not  speaking 
of  the  public,  I  am  only  speaking  of  certain  depraved  and  crooked  little 
men." 

After  this  sally  Mr.  Gladstone  passed  on  to  consider  the  speech  of  Mr. 
Disraeli.  "  At  last  we  have  obtained,"  said  the  speaker,  "  a  declaration  from 
an  authoritative  source  that  a  bill  which,  in  a  country  with  five  millions  of 
adult  males,  proposes  to  add  to  a  limited  constituency  two  hundred  thou- 
sand of  the  middle  class  and  two  hundred  thousand  of  the  working  class  is 
in  the  judgment  of  the  leader  of  the  Tory  party  a  bill  to  reconstruct  the 
Constitution  on  American  principles."  The  statement  of  this  position  of 
Mr.  Disraeli  seemed  to  be  sufficient  to  confute  his  argument.  What  that 
gentleman  said  relative  to  the  attitude  of  Mr.  Gladstone  in  1830-32  seemed 


REFORM    BILL    OF     1 866.  389 

to  touch  the  speaker,  and  he  rose  to  the  height  of  the  occasion.  He  called 
attention  of  the  House  to  the  fact  that  Mr.  Disraeli,  in  replying  to  Mr.  John 
Stuart  Mill,  had  disclaimed  the  intention  of  referring  to  the  writings  of  that 
distinguished  gentleman  produced  a  quarter  of  a  century  previously.  Then 
Mr.  Gladstone  continued:  "The  right  honorable  gentleman,  secure  in  the 
recollection  of  his  own  consistency',  has  taunted  me  with  the  errors  of  my 
boyhood.  When  he  addressed  the  honorable  member  for  Westminster  he 
showed  his  magnanimity  by  declaring  that  he  would  not  take  the  philosopher 
to  task  for  what  he  wrote  twenty-five  years  ago  ;  but  when  he  caught  one 
who,  thirty-six  years  ago,  just  emerged  from  boyhood,  and  still  an  under- 
graduate at  Oxford,  had  expressed  an  opinion  adverse  to  the  Reform  Bill 
of  1832,  of  which  he  had  so  long  and  bitterly  repented,  then  the  right  hon- 
orable gentleman  could  not  resist  the  temptation.  ... 

"  As  the  right  honorable  gentleman  has  exhibited  me,  let  me  exhibit 
myself  It  is  true,  I  deeply  regret  it  ;  but  I  was  bred  under  the  shadow  of 
the  great  name  of  Canning  ;  every  influence  connected  with  that  name 
governed  the  politics  of  my  childhood  and  of  my  youth  ;  with  Canning  I 
rejoiced  in  the  removal  of  religious  disabilities  and  in  the  character  which 
he  gave  to  our  policy  abroad  ;  with  Canning  I  rejoiced  in  the  opening  which 
he  made  toward  the  establishment  of  free  commercial  interchanofes  between 
nations ;  with  Canning,  and  under  the  shadow  of  that  great  name,  and  under 
the  shadow  of  that  yet  more  venerable  name  of  Burke,  I  grant  my  youth- 
ful mind  and  imagination  were  impressed  just  the  same  as  the  mature  mind 
of  the  right  honorable  gentleman  is  now  impressed.  I  conceived  that  fear 
and  alarm  of  the  first  Reform  Bill  in  the  days  of  my  undergraduate  career 
at  Oxford  which  the  right  honorable  gentleman  now  feels.  ...  I  envy  him 
not  one  particle  of  the  polemical  advantage  which  he  has  gained  by  his  dis- 
creet reference  to  the  proceedings  of  the  Oxford  Union  Debating  Society 
in  the  year  of  grace  1831. 

"  My  position,  sir,  in  regard  to  the  Liberal  party  is  in  all  points  the 
opposite  of  Earl  Russell's.  ...  I  have  none  of  the  claims  he  possesses.  I 
came  among  you  an  outcast  from  those  with  whom  I  associated,  driven  from 
them,  I  admit,  by  no  arbitrary  act,  but  by  the  slow  and  resistless  force  of 
conviction.  I  came  among  you,  to  make  use  of  the  legal  phraseology,  in 
forma  pauperis.  I  have  nothing  to  offer  you  but  honorable  and  faithful 
service.  You  received  me  with  kindness,  indulgence,  generosity,  and,  I  may 
even  say,  with  some  measure  of  confidence.  And  the  relation  between  us 
has  assumed  such  a  form  that  you  can  never  be  my  debtors,  but  that  I  must 
forever  be  in  your  debt." 

Mr.  Gladstone,  drawing  to  a  close,  said  :  "  We  are  assailed  ;  this  bill  is 
in  a  state  of  crisis  and  of  peril,  and  the  government  along  with  it.  We 
stand  or  fall  with  it.  .  .  .     We  stand  with  it  now  ;  we  may  fall  with  it  a  short 


390  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

time  hence.  If  we  do  so  fall,  we,  or  others  in  our  places,  shall  rise  with  it 
hereafter.  I  shall  not  attempt  to  measure  with  precision  the  forces  that 
are  to  be  arrayed  against  us  in  the  coming  issue.  Perhaps  the  great  divi- 
sion of  to-night  is  not  the  last  that  must  take  place  in  the  struggle.  At 
some  point  of  the  contest  you  may  possibly  succeed.  You  may  drive  us 
from  our  seats.  You  may  bury  the  bill  that  we  have  introduced,  but  we 
will  write  upon  its  gravestone  for  an  epitaph  this  line,  with  certain  confi- 
dence in  its  fulfillment  : 

"  ''  Exoriare  aliqnis  nostris  ex  ossibus  tiltor* 
['Out  of  our  bones  some  avenger  will  arise.'] 

"You  cannot  fight  against  the  future.  Time  is  on  our  side.  The  great 
social  forces  which  move  onward  in  their  might  and  majesty,  and  which  the 
tumult  of  our  debates  does  not  for  a  moment  impede  or  disturb — those 
great  social  forces  are  against  you  ;  they  are  marshaled  on  our  side,  and  the 
banner  which  we  now  carry  in  this  fight,  though  perhaps  at  some  moment 
it  may  droop  over  our  sinking  heads,  yet  it  soon  again  will  float  in  the  eye 
of  heaven,  and  it  will  be  borne  by  the  firm  hands  of  the  united  people  of 
the  three  kingdoms,  perhaps  not  to  an  easy,  but  to  a  certain  and  to  a  not 
far  distant  victory." 

Thus  concluded  the  remarkable  debate.  It  had  become  manifest  at  the 
end  that  the  division  would  be  close.  It  might  not  be  certainly  known  on 
which  side  the  majority  would  declare.  The  crisis  came.  The  speaker  put 
the  question,  and  in  the  English  manner  the  members  of  the  House  with- 
drew to  be  counted.  So  nearly  balanced  were  the  forces  that  no  one  but 
the  tellers  could  declare  whether  the  second  reading  of  the  bill  had  passed 
or  been  rejected.  The  members  returned,  and  the  tellers  handed  up  their 
report.  There  was  a  moment  of  suppressed  agitation,  not  only  on  the 
floor  of  the  House,  but  in  the  galleries  and  corridors,  that  were  packed  with 
people  to  the  utmost  capacity. 

At  length  the  speaker  said,  "Ayes,  318;  noes,  313."  Then  came  a 
scene  the  like  of  which  has  rarely  been  witnessed  in  the  House  of  Com- 
mons. The  storm  of  shouting  burst  in  one  uproarious  blast  from  floor  and 
gallery.  The  Tories  were  frantic  and  the  Adullamites  seemed  to  be  utterly 
abandoned  to  the  delirium  of  what  was  a  virtual  victory  over  the  govern- 
ment. The  majority  for  the  governmental  proposition  was  only  five  for 
the  second  reading  !  That  plainly  portended  the  end  of  all  things.  It 
was  said  that  ■Nlr.  Robert  Lowe  was  for  the  time  in  an  ecstasy  that  might 
easily  have  been  mistaken  for  insanity.  He  stood  in  his  seat  and  waved 
his  hat  and  shouted  to  exhaustion.  It  seemed  to  him  and  the  Adullamites 
like  a  personal  triumph  over  all  the  powers.  It  looked  like  the  disruption 
of  the  Liberal  party.     The  storm  roared  on   until  it   exhausted  itself,  like  a 


REFORM    BILL    OF     1 866. 


391 


wind  cloud  charcfed  with  the  debris  of  earth  rattHni,^  down  the  horizon. 
Then  all  of  a  sudden  there  was  a  great  calm,  when  Mr.  Gladstone  arose  and, 
without  the  slightest  perturbation,  addressing  the  speaker,  said :  "  Sir,  I 
propose  to  fix  the  committee  for  Monday,  and  I  will  then  state  the  order  of 
business." 

It  was  already  daybreak  when  the  scene  was  over.  The  excitement 
which  had  just  burst  in  the  House  rolled  out  into  the  palace  yard,  thence 
into  the  streets,  thence  throuirh  London  and  Enofland  and  the  world.  It 
was  now  realized  that  the  government  was  in  deadly  peril,  and  would  per- 
haps be  driven  across  the  border.  Mr.  Gladstone,  to  use  his  own  expres- 
sion, had  adopted  the  policy  of  burning  the  bridges  behind  him.  He  had 
announced  that  the  government  would  stand  or  fall  with  the  Franchise  Bill. 
He  had  made  his  speech  about  the  banner  that  might  droop  over  his  head 
but  would  still  be  borne  to  victory.  More  important  still,  he  had  promised 
an  impatient  House  that  as  soon  as  the  bill  had  passed  the  second  reading 
he  would  report  his  plan  for  the  redistribution  of  the  parliamentary  seats. 
This  must  now  be  done.  It  could  but  be  foreseen  that  a  proposed  change 
in  the  apportionment  w^ould  bring  confusion,  cause  further  defection,  and  in 
all  probability  bring  an  adverse  vote  to  the  government. 

But  Mr.  Gladstone  went  boldly  forward  with  his  plan  for  redistribution. 
He  would  not  disfranchise  any  of  the  boroughs.  He  would  not  alter  the 
total  number  of  members  in  the  House.  Some  of  the  smaller  borouehs 
should  be  reduced  in  their  representation  from  two  members  to  one.  In  a 
few  cases  boroughs  now  separate  should  be  consolidated.  By  these  means 
there  \vould  be  a  gain  of  forty-nine  seats,  and  the  seats  thus  gained  might 
be  advantageously  distributed  in  the  way  of  equalizing  the  whole  repre- 
sentation. Of  the  forty-nine  seats  thus  gained  Liverpool,  Manchester,  Bir- 
mingham, Leeds,  and  Salford  should  have  one  member  each  additional. 
Twenty-one  seats  should  be  distributed  to  counties  and  divisions  of  coun- 
ties that  were  now  inadequately  represented.  The  borough  called  Tower 
Hamlets  should  be  divided  into  two,  and  each  division  should  have  two 
members.  Chelsea  and  Kensington  were  made  into  a  borough  with  two 
members.  Burnley,  Stalybridge,  Gravesend,  Hartlepool,  Middlesborough, 
Dewsbury,  and  the  University  of  London  should  each  have  an  additional 
member.  The  remainder  of  the  seats  gained  should  be  allotted  equitably 
to  Scotland  and  Ireland. 

Such  was  the  Redistribution  Bill,  which  came  to  its  second  reading  on 
the  14th  of  May,  1866.  Then  the  two  measures,  namely,  the  Franchise  Bill 
and  the  Redistribution  Bill,  were  combined,  and  on  the  28th  of  the  month 
were  brought  forward  as  one  measure.  Then  the  usual  fusillade  broke  out. 
Sir  Robert  Knightley  offered  an  amendment  to  prevent  corruption  and 
bribery  at  the  elections,  and,  though  the  government  opposed,  the  amend- 


39^ 


LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE, 


ment  was  carried.  Mr.  Hayter,  and  ]\Ir.  Lowe  entered  the  arena,  and  the 
excitement  again  rose  high.  There  was  a  proposition  against  the  grouping 
of  boroughs  proposed  in  the  governmental  plan  ;  but  the  mover  was  induced 
to  withdraw  it.  Presently  Lord  Dunkellin,  a  Liberal  in  name,  offered  an 
amendment  that  the  basis  of  franchise  should  be  made  according  to  the  tax 
rates  of  the  intending  elector,  and  not  according  to  rental. 

This  proposition  Mr.  Gladstone,  as  the  spokesman  of  the  government, 
strenuously  opposed.     He  said  that  the  principle  of  resting  the  franchise  on 


"  Tour.  ' 


BALMORAL   CASTLE. 


rates  instead  of  rentals  was  fatal  to  the  pending  plan,  and  that  the  govern- 
ment would  insist  on  the  bill  in  its  present  form.  Hereupon  the  House 
divided  on  Lord  Dunkellin's  amendment,  and  the  same  was  adopted  against 
the  government  by  a  vote  of  three  hundred  and  fifteen  against  three  hundred 
and  four.  This  was  a  coup  de  grace  to  the  Russell  ministry.  There  was  a 
majority  of  eleven  squarely  against  a  measure  which  the  leader  of  the 
House  declared  to  be  essential.  The  ministry  hereupon  resigned,  leaving 
the  Conservatives  and  the  Adullamites  to  enjoy  their  extraordinary  success 
as  they  would. 


REFORM    BILL    OF     1 866. 


393 


The  queen  at  this  juncture  was  at  Balmoral  Castle,  and  some  days  were 
required  to  complete  the  formality  of  resignation.  There  was  a  reluctance 
on  the  part  of  her  majesty  to  allow  the  government  of  her  "  old  and  tried 
friend,"  Lord  Russell,  to  be  driven  out ;  but  Mr.  Gladstone  showed  that 
the  exigency  required  a  change  of  ministry.  The  government,  he  said,  had 
given  a  pledge  to  stand  or  fall  by  the  Franchise  Bill.  He  admitted  that 
such  pledges  ought  to  be  rarely  made.  He  said  that  a  promise  of  this  kind 
was  "  the  last  weapon  in  the  armory  of  the  government ;  it  should  not 
lightly  be  taken  down  from  the  wall  ;  and  if  it  is  taken  down  it  should  not 
be  lightly  replaced,  nor  till  it  has  served  the  purposes  it  was  meant  to  fulfill." 
The  queen  was  constrained  by  the  constitutional  exigency  to  accept  Lord 
Russell's  resignation,  and  casting  about  she  chose  Lord  Derby  as  his  suc- 
cessor. Benjamin  Disraeli  was  made  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer ;  Lord 
Stanley,  Secretary  for  Foreign  Affairs  ;  Mr.  Walpole,  Home  Secretary;  and 
Viscount  Cranborne,  Secretary  for  India.  Lord  Derby,  feeling  his  way 
cautiously,  devised  the  scheme  of  incorporating  certain  members  of  the 
Liberal  party  in  a  new  ministry;  but  the  Liberals,  not  to  be  so  easily 
caught,  sent  Lord  Grosvenor  to  say  to  Lord  Derby  that,  while  they  might  be 
able  as  independents  to  give  a  qualified  support  to  governmental  measures, 
they  could  not  accept  places  in  the  cabinet. 

These  events  occupied  the  month  of  June.  The  new  ministry  was 
completed  early  in  July,  but  the  prorogation  of  Parliament  was  at  hand, 
and  there  was  no  time  for  the  orovernment  to  do  more  than  to  offer 
preliminary  statements.  Lord  Derby  proceeded  with  great  caution, 
letting  it  be  understood  that  the  new  ministry  was  not  opposed  in  par- 
ticular to  the  reform  of  Parliament,  and  hintine  that  the  same  ouo-ht  to 
be  effected  by  the  cooperation  of  the  two  great  parties.  He  went  so  far 
as  to  say  that  he  should  be  pleased  if  "  a  safe  and  satisfactory  measure  " 
of  reform  could  be  passed.  He  thought  that  a  considerable  number  of 
those  who  were  not  now  admitted  to  the  electoral  franchise  oueht  to  be 
admitted.  He  believed,  however,  that  that  part  of  the  people  who 
appeared  to  be  most  earnest  in  advocating  a  reform  bill  were  not  those 
who  could  command  the  confidence  of  either  the  Conservative  or  the 
Liberal  party. 

The  meaning  of  these  outgivings  on  the  part  of  the  prime  minister 
was  not  far  to  seek.  The  government  in  Great  Britain  is  sensitive  to  pub- 
lic opinion.  It  is  quite  true  that  whenever  the  people  arise  in  their  might 
the  government  of  that  empire  becomes  quite  humble  before  them.  In  the 
present  case  the  people  were  thoroughly  aroused.  The  overthrow  of  the 
Russell  ministry  led  immediately  to  an  outcry  in  England  which  could  not 
be  well  disregarded.  Monster  demonstrations  began  to  be  held  in  all  the 
leading  cities.     One  crowd  of  ten  thousand  persons  gathered  in  Trafalgar 


394  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

Square  and  passed  a  resolution  of  regret  that  the  late  ministry  instead  of 
resigning  had  not  appealed  to  the  country. 

Other  meetings  of  like  kind  were  held  in  London.  The  great  manu- 
facturinor  towns  were  ablaze  with  excitement.  The  utterances  of  the  orators 
were  of  no  uncertain  qualit)-.  The  Tories  at  first  undertook  to  cry  down 
the  meetings  and  the  resolutions  of  the  meetings,  on  the  ground  that  they 
were  merely  covert  expressions  of  democracy,  republicanism,  revolution,  ter- 
rorism, and  anarchy.  But  the  people  took  no  fright.  Out  at  Brookfields, 
near  Birmingham,  a  host  gathered  that  was  said  to  number  two  hundred 
and  fifty  thousand.  John  Bright  and  his  fellow-patriots  addressed  crowds 
that  could  not  be  numbered.  Organization  was  resorted  to.  A  Reform 
League  was  created,  having  for  its  president  Mr.  Edmond  Beales,  a  man  of 
considerable  force  of  character  and  abilities  as  a  leader. 

The  excitement  rose  high.  A  monster  meeting  was  called,  to  be  held 
in  Hyde  Park  on  the  23d  of  July.  All  London  seemed  to  be  astir,  and  the 
government  took  alarm  at  a  movement  which  seemed  to  be  little  less  than 
revolutionary.  A  proclamation  was  issued  by  Sir  Richard  Mayne,  Chief 
Commissioner  of  the  London  Police,  forbidding  the  meeting  and  ordering 
the  closing  of  the  gates.  The  police  was  ordered  out,  and  certain  military 
contingents  got  ready  for  the  crisis.  When  the  day  came  an  innumerable 
throng  made  its  way  toward  Hyde  Park,  and  the  head  of  the  column  was 
resisted  at  the  gates.  There  was  parleying  and  disputing,  and  on  the  part 
of  the  rougher  element  some  stone-throwine,  hootinof,  and  insurrection. 
But  the  great  body  heeded  the  mandate  of  authority  and  stood  aloof. 
Thousands,  however,  turned  into  the  side  street,  packed  it  full,  crowded 
against  the  fence  of  the  park,  which  gave  way  under  the  pressure,  and  the 
floods  rushed  in.  Thousands  upon  thousands  roared  along  over  flower 
beds  and  forbidden  grass  plots,  shouting  and  indulging  in  some  good  old 
Ancrlo-Saxon  fist  ficjhtino-,  without  much  fear  of  interference.  There  was  a 
little  firing,  and  many  persons  were  seriously  hurt  ;  but  the  Life  Guards 
came  on  the  scene,  and  order  was  restored  without  much  difficulty. 

The  effect  of  all  this  was  salutary.  Toryism  had  a  change  of  heart. 
The  Reform  League  came  to  be  recognized  as  a  force  in  society.  Its  lead- 
ers were  invited  by  Mr.  Walpole,  of  the  Home  Office,  to  meet  him  for  a 
conference  with  respect  to  what  he  called  "  the  unhappy  proceedings."  The 
story  went  abroad  that  at  the  interview  the  home  secretary  was  quite  defer- 
ential to  the  representatives  of  the  people,  and  that  he  attested  his  feelings 
by  shedding  a  few  tears.  So  the  violent  aspect  of  affairs  in  London  passed 
by,  but  not  without  a  striking  effect  on  the  ministerial  niind.  Lord  Derby, 
and  in  particular  r^lr.  Disraeli,  perceived  that  something  must  be  done  in  the 
way  of  a  reform  bill,  or  else  themselves  must  be  hurtled  out  of  office  by 
the   winds  of  popular   disapproval.     It   was    devolved    on    Mr.    Disraeli  as 


REFORM     BILL    OL     1 866.  395 

leader  in  the  House  of  Commons  to  meet  as  best  he  might  this  remarkable 
condition  of  affairs.  No  doubt  of  all  the  men  in  the  world  he  was  best 
qualified  to  do  it!  His  qualities  were  well  understood.  Lord  Salisbury 
had  declared  that  the  ethics  of  Mr.  Disraeli  were  the  ethics  of  a  political 
adventurer.  He  had  got  to  himself  several  sobriquets  significant  of  the 
popular  estimation  of  his  character  and  abilities.  He  was  called  "the  Asian 
Mystery."  Others  changed  the  title  a  little  by  designating  him  as  "  the 
Hebrew  Mystery  Man," 

It  should  be  allowed  that  this  business  affected  him  but  little,  or  not  at 
all.  He  was  ready  for  any  contingency,  and  having  his  eye  fixed-and  single 
to  the  question  of  being  Prime  Minister  of  England,  he  deemed  it  well  to 
write  expediency  on  the  blade  of  his  sword.  He  understood  perfectly  that 
the  recent  revulsion  by  which  he  had  come  into  power  was  only  an  incident. 
He  read  the  signs  of  the  times  aright,  and  knew  that  a  parliamentary 
reform,  and  in  particular  a  reform  of  the  franchise,  was  a  certainty  of  the 
near  future.  Fully  apprehending  the  situation  he  deliberately  made  up  his 
mind  to  become  a  reformer  himself,  to  make  the  Tory  government  of  Lord 
Derby  a  reforming  government,  to  outdo,  if  necessary,  the  Liberal  enemy  at 
his  own  game  of  popular* advances,  to  snatch  the  very  wqnd  out  of  his  sail 
and  leave  his  ship  becalmed  at  sea  until  the  masts  should  rot  and  fall  down 
piecemeal. 

The  scheme  was  worthy  of  the  man.  Of  course  he  did  not  at  once 
divulge  his  plans,  but  went  forward  cautiously,  feeling  his  way.  On  the  5th 
of  February,  1867,  the  House  of  Commons  convened.  Mr.  Disraeli  arose 
and  began  his  first  communication  as  the  mouthpiece  of  the  government. 
He  said  that  for  his  part  he  thought  the  time  had  come  when  parliament- 
ary reform  should  no  longer  be  a  question  which  ought  to  decide  the  fate 
of  ministers.  This  was  fairly  good  to  begin  with !  The  statement  was 
received  with  a  roar  of  laughter  from  the  opposition.  Mr.  Disraeli  did  not 
propose  to  hazard  anything  by  the  sudden  assumption  of  perilous  responsi- 
bilities. The  derision  with  which  his  first  propositions  were  met  disturbed 
him  not  at  all.  He  went  on  to  say  that  the  government  had  prepared  thir- 
teen resolutions  which  he  would  offer  one -by  one  to  the  House,  as  express- 
ive of  the  tentative  purposes  of  the  ministry  covering  the  matter  of  reform. 

The  speaker  then  began  with  resolving  something  or  other  which  was 
so  true  as  to  be  absurd  !  From  this  axiomatic  basis  he  worked  along  into 
certain  and  sundry  changes,  as  if  to  feel  the  temper  of  the  House.  One 
resolution  reembodied  the  principle  of  Lord  Dunkellin's  amendment  on 
which  the  late  government  had  gone  to  pieces.  Another  related  to  a  system 
of  plural  voting  as  a  settlement  of  the  franchise  question  in  boroughs. 
Still  another  declared  it  inexpedient  to  disfranchise  any  borough  altogether ; 
and  another  would  leave  it  to  the  option  of  the  elector  to  vote  by  ballot. 


596 


LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE 


CONFLICT    OF   THE   AUTHORITIES    W 


/VVH   THE    KKKORM    LEAGUE    DEMOxNSTRATION,    JULY    23,    1866. 


REFORM    BILL    OF     1866.  397 

The  last  resolution  proposed  a  scheme  for  a  royal  commission  to  consider 
and  submit  a  plan  for  alterations  in  the  boundaries  of  parliamentary 
boroughs. 

The  Liberal  leaders  mounted  upon  these  resolutions  as  though  they 
were  chaff  in  the  breach  of  a  wall ;  and  the  work  was  easy  enough.  The 
resolutions  were  assailable  at  almost  every  point.  Besides,  affairs  outside 
were  again  heating  themselves  to  the  point  of  combustion.  While  Mr.  Dis- 
raeli was  reading  his  resolutions  a  crowd  of  Englishmen,  numbering  about 
twenty  thousand,  assembled  in  Agricultural  Hall  at  Islington,  and  having 
obtained  possession  of  Mr.  Disraeli's  pending  platitudes,  passed  a  resolution 
to  the  effect  that  no  change  in  the  representation  of  the  people  in  Parlia- 
ment would  be  satisfactory  which  was  not  based  on  the  principle  of  the 
people  themselves  being  personally  represented,  and  that  such  direct  and 
real  representation  could  be  effected  only  by  means  of  "  residential  and 
registered  manhood  suffrage,  protected  in  its  exercise  by  the  ballot."  The 
assemblage  was  made  up  of  workingmen  and  trades  unionists — a  class  whose 
voice  could  be  no  longer  disregarded  in  the  affairs  of  Great  Britain. 

On  the  2ist  of  February  a  ministerial  meeting  was  held  to  determine, 
if  possible,  the  details  of  a  bill  to  be  presented  to  the  House.  The  prime 
minister  was  reported  to  have  said  at  this  meeting  that  for  his  part  this 
"would  be  the  last  time  in  which  he  would  attempt  to  meet  the  question  of 
reform,  and  that  in  case  of  failure  nothing  would  again  induce  him  to  accept 
the  onerous  duty  of  conducting  the  government. 

The  history  of  what  transpired  is  here  obscure.  It  is  said  that  a  bill 
was  prepared,  but  that  it  was  not  the  bill  which  was  presented  to  the  House. 
That  measure,  it  is  believed,  w^as  prepared  at  an  extra-official  meeting  of  the 
cabinet,  on  account  of  the  refusal  of  some  of  the  members  to  support  the 
reofular  bill  which  Mr.  Disraeli  had  in  hand.  Three  of  the  ministers  were  at 
this  juncture  on  the  point  of  resigning.  The  bill  that  was  brought  before 
Parliament  on  the  25th  of  February  was  designated  as  the  Ten  Minutes 
Bill,  because  it  was  said  to  have  been  prepared  in  that  length  of  time. 

At  any  rate  Mr.  Disraeli  had  two  bills  in  hand,  or  one  in  hand  and  one 
in  pocket,  the  latter  being  radical  and  disruptive,  the  former  reformatory 
but  tame.  The  bill  in  hand  was  brought  forward  and  was  met  with  such 
pronounced  and  general  opposition  that  Mr.  Disraeli  withdrew  it  from  con- 
sideration so  quickly  that  his  critics  said  the  bill  had  disappeared  in  a  time 
as  short  as  that  of  its  preparation. 

This  left  the  leader  of  the  House  no  alternative  but  to  bring  forward 
the  real  bill,  which  it  is  claimed  he  had  already  prepared.  We  should 
remark  that  this  method  and  act  of  trifling  with  the  House  of  Commons 
— tormenting  it,  so  to  speak,  in  a  manner  that  seemed  to  proceed  on  the 
hypothesis  that  honesty  does  not  exist — would  have  wrecked  then  and  there 


398  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

any  other  statesman  except  "the  Asian  Mystery."  Him  it  seems  to  have 
affected  not  at  all.  The  chancellor  of  the  exchequer  came  on  with  his  bill 
on  the  1 8th  of  March,  1867,  and  having-  now  got  down  to  the  level  of  busi- 
ness and  necessity  his  measure  was  heard  with  the  profoundest  interest. 

There  was  a  full  House;  there  were  crowded  galleries ;  there  was  an 
anxious  country  outside.  Mr.  Disraeli  met  all  this  with  a  plan  of  reform 
in  the  franchise  and  parliamentary  representation  which  went  altogether 
beyond  the  plan  wdiich  Mr.  Gladstone  had  proposed  the  year  before,  was 
more  radical  in  its  provisions,  more  thoroughgoing  and  more  rational  in  its 
bottom  principles,  and  more  inclusive  in  its  general  character.  It  was  a 
spectacle  that  might  well  astonish  the  whole  political  world  to  see  the 
accomplished  and  perfectly  self-possessed  leader  and  representative  of  the 
Tory  party  in  Great  Britain  offering  a  measure  of  reform  in  the  House  of 
Commons  which  altoeether  exceeded  in  merit  the  measure  which  the  Lib- 
eral  party  less  than  a  twelvemonth  before  would  have  gladly  accepted,  and 
which  that  party  could  not  pass  because  of  the  defection  and  recalcitrancy 
of  some  of  its  own  members.* 

What,  then,  were  the  provisions  of  this  Tory  Reform  Bill  of  1867.?  In 
the  first  place,  the  right  of  suffrage  was  to  be  conferred  on  every  man  of  full 
age  not  subject  to  any  legal  incapacity  who,  whether  as  owner  or  tenant, 
had  for  the  two  full  preceding  years  occupied  any  dwelling  house  within  the 
borough  of  his  residence,  and  who  had  during  that  time  been  rated  (or  as 
we  should  say,  taxed)  under  the  full  schedule  for  the  relief  of  the  poor,  as 
determined  for  the  premises  occupied,  and  who  had  before  the  20th  of  July 
in  the  current  year  paid  all  such  poor  rates  that  had  accrued  up  to  the  pre- 
ceding 5th  day  of  January,  This  clause  was  indeed  a  large  and  liberal 
stride  in  the  direction  of  manhood  suffrage. 

In  the  second  place,  the  right  of  the  franchise  in  the  counties  was  to  be 
granted  to  every  man  of  full  age,  not  subject  to  legal  incapacity,  who  on  the 
last  day  of  July  in  any  year  had  for  the  preceding  twelve  months  been  the 
occupant,  whether  as  owner  or  tenant,  of  premises  within  the  county  rated 
(that  is,  taxed)  at  a  valuation  of  fifteen  pounds  or  upward,  and  who  during 
the  time  of  such  occupancy  had  been  taxed  under  the  full  schedule  for  the 

*What  Mr.  Disraeli  thought  of  this  business  liimself  may  be  seen  in  an  extract  from  the  speech  which  he 
delivered  subsequently  at  a  banquet  at  Guildhall.  "  What,"  said  he,  "is  the  Tory  party  if  it  does  not  represent 
national  feeling?  The  Tory  party  is  nothing  unless  it  represent  and  uphold  the  institutions  of  the  country.  For 
what  are  the  institutions  of  the  country?  They  are  entirely,  in  theory,  and  I  am  glad  to  see  they  are  lil<ely  to  be 
in  practice,  the  embodiment  of  the  national  necessities,  and  the  only  security  for  national  privileges.  Well,  then, 
I  cannot  help  believing  that  because  my  Lord  Derby  and  his  colleagues  have  taken  a  happy  opportunity  to 
enlarge  the  privileges  of  the  people  of  England  we  have  not  done  anything  but  strengthen  the  institutions  of  this 
country,  the  essence  of  whose  force  is  that  they  represent  the  interests  and  guard  the  rights  of  the  people."  In 
this  extract  we  may  clearly  discern  the  workings  of  that  adroit,  cunning,  and  comprehensive  intellect  which  was 
destined  in  the  ensuing  decade  to  rise  to  the  vei7  highest  place  of  influence  and  power  in  the  affairs  of  Great 
Britain. 


REFORM     13ILL    OF     1 866.  399 

relief  of  the  poor  and  before  the  20th  of  July  in  the  current  year  had  paid 
all  tax  dues  that  had  accrued  up  to  the  preceding  5th  day  of  January.  This 
was  another  stride. 

The  third  clause  granted  the  right  of  suffrage  to  all  graduates  or  asso- 
ciates in  arts  of  any  university  of  the  United  Kingdom  ;  also  to  every  male 
person  who  had  passed  at  any  senior  middle-class  examination  of  any 
university  of  the  United  Kingdom  ;  also  to  every  ordained  priest  or  deacon 
of  the  Church  of  England  or  minister  of  any  other  denomination  ;  also  to  all 
barristers,  pleaders,  attorneys,  medical  men,  and  schoolmasters  holding 
certificates.  This  clause,  leaving  property  out  of  view  as  a  basis  of  the 
franchise,  adopted  the  educational  qualification  with  such  boldness  and 
freedom  as  to  commend  itself  to  the  intellectual  classes  of  the  country. 

The  fourth  clause  returned  to  property  (but  not  to  landed  property) 
as  a  basis  of  the  right  of  suffrage.  By  this  clause  every  man  who  on  the  ist 
of  July  in  any  year  and  for  the  two  years  immediately  preceding  had  had  a 
balance  of  not  less  than  fifty  pounds  in  a  savings  bank  or  in  the  Bank  of 
England,  or  in  any  parliamentary  stocks  or  funds,  or  who  during  the  twelve 
months  immediately  preceding  the  5th  of  April  in  any  year  had  been 
charged  with  and  paid  twenty  shillings  for  taxes  and  income  tax,  should  be 
admitted  to  the  franchise. 

The  next  clause  related  to  double  voting— a  method  unknown  in 
America.  The  bill  provided  that  any  person  registered  as  a  voter  for  a 
borough  by  reason  of  his  having  been  charged  with  and  paid  the  requisite 
amount  of  assessed  taxes  and  income  tax,  or  either  of  such  taxes,  should  not 
on  that  account  lose  any  right  to  which  he  might  be  entitled — if  he  were 
otherwise  duly  qualified — to  be  registered  as  a  voter  for  the  same  borough 
on  the  ground  of  any  franchise  involving  occupation  of  premises  and 
payment  of  rates.  When  so  registered  in  respect  of  such  double  qualifica- 
tion the  elector  should  be  entitled  to  cast  two  votes  for  the  member  to  be 
returned  to  Parliament  for  that  borough.  The  clause  provided,  in  a  word, 
that  any  elector  qualified  under  two  provisions  of  the  law  to  vote  might 
cast  two  votes,  one,  as  it  were,  under  one  provision,  and  the  other  under  the 
other. 

Such  were  the  principal  features  of  the  Franchise  Bill.  The  provision 
of  the  Redistribution  Bill  related  first  of  all  to  the  boroughs  that  should  be 
reduced  to  a  single  representative.  These  were  Honiton,  Thetford,  Wells, 
Evesham,  Marlborough,  Norwich,  Richmond,  Lymington,  Knaresborough, 
Andover,  Leominster,  Tewkesbury,  Ludlow,  Ripon,  Huntingdon,  Maldon, 
Cirencester,  Bodmin,  Great  Marlow,  Devizes,  Hertford,  Dorchester,  and 
Litchfield.  The  following  boroughs  should  be  disfranchised  :  Totness, 
Reigate,  Great  Yarmouth,  and  Lancaster.  The  Tower  Hamlets  should  be 
divided   into  two  boroughs,  and  each  of  these  should  have  two  representa- 


400  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

tives.  The  following  counties  or  parts  of  counties  were  to  be  divided  into 
two  districts,  and  each  district  should  have  two  representatives,  namely, 
South  Devon,  West  Kent,  North  Lancashire,  South  Lancashire,  Lincoln, 
Middlesex,  South  Staffordshire,  and  East  Surrey.  The  following  districts 
should  be  enfranchised  and  have  one  representative  each,  namel}',  Torquay, 
Darlington,  Hartlepool,  Gravesend,  St.  Helen's,  Burnley,  Stalybridge, 
Wednesbury,  Croydon,  Middlesborough,  Dewsbury,  Burslem,  and  the 
University  of  London. 

In  one  particular  the  bill  followed  the  lead  of  Lord  Dunkellin's  propo- 
sition. The  plan  of  drawing  a  line  against  a  certain  class  of  possible 
electors  at  the  minimum  of  seven  pounds,  on  the  ground  that  those  not 
possessed  of  that  sum  would  be  most  open  to  bribery  and  corruption,  was  a 
part  of  the  Gladstonian  scheme.  This  was  rejected  in  the  plan  of  Disraeli, 
and  simple  household  suffrage,  with  the  payment  of  taxes,  was  inserted 
therefor.  By  this  means  the  so-called  "compound  householders"  were 
excluded  from  the  suffrage  to  which  indeed  under  equitable  provisions  they 
were  not  entitled. 

According  to  Mr.  Disraeli's  calculations  there  would  be  added  about 
two  hundred  and  thirty-seven  thousand  electors  to  the  lists,  while  four 
hundred  and  eighty-six  thousand  would  still  be  excluded  from  the  borough 
franchise.  Fixing  his  attention  on  the  social  conditions  in  Great  Britain,  he 
reckoned  that  under  the  proposed  bill  one  fourth  of  the  voting  power  of  the 
kingdom  would  belong  to  the  aristocracy-,  one  fourth  to  the  working  classes, 
and  the  remaining  two  fourths  to  the  middle  classes  of  the  people. 

Here,  then,  was  a  great,  and  we  must  say  veritable,  system  of  reform. 
The  measure,  as  we  have  said,  completely  robbed  the  bellying  sails  of 
Liberalism  of  their  wonted  winds — and  the  sails  fell  flapping.  But  we  are 
not  to  suppose  that  the  daring  scheme  of  the  Tory  leader  was  to  pass 
imchailenged  through  the  House  of  Commons.  Mr.  Gladstone  was  ready 
for  the  fray.  As  the  head  of  his  party  he  was  armed  for  the  combat ;  but 
as  a  patriot  he  was  willing  to  concede  much  to  the  cause  of  reform,  although 
his  own  banner  was  drooping. 

There  was  a  conference  of  the  Liberal  leaders  and  a  difference  of 
views  as  to  how  they  should  proceed.  Some  wished  to  take  what  the  gods 
had  sent,  and  most  were  of  this  opinion.  In  deference  to  it  Mr.  Gladstone 
agreed  that  the  bill  might  pass  the  second  reading  without  opposition  ;  but 
he  set  forth  with  great  cogency  the  parts  of  the  measure  which  he  should 
oppose.  These  were  the  omission  of  a  clause  for  the  enfranchisement  of 
lodgers;  the  omission  of  a  provision  against  traffic  in  votes  of  poor  house- 
holders, which  might  easily  begin  by  the  corrupt  payment  of  the  taxes  of 
such  for  the  sake  of  their  votes  ;  the  clause  disqualifying  compound  house- 
holders   under    the    existing  law ;    the    clause   adding    disqualifications    to 


REFORM    BILL    OF    1 866.  4OI 

compound  householders  under  the  proposed  law;  the  clause  providing  a 
franchise  founded  on  direct  taxation  ;  the  clause  providing  for  plural,  or  at 
least  dual,  voting ;  the  part  relating  to  the  redistribution  of  parliamentary 
seats,  which  Mr.  Gladstone  regarded  as  inadequate  ;  the  clause  reducing  the 
franchise  in  counties,  which  was  insufficient ;  the  proposal  to  adopt  the 
ballot;  the  clause  relative  to  special  franchises.  In  fact,  the  objections  of 
the  Liberal  leader  extended  to  the  larger  part  of  the  details,  and  to  a  con- 
siderable part  of  the  essentials,  of  the  bill. 

So  the  measure  of  Mr.  Disraeli  and  the  Tory  reformers  passed  the  second 
reading,  and  was  sent  into  committee.  The  discussions,  however,  cleared  the 
field  a  little  on  a  few  points.  That  part  of  the  bill  providing  for  dual  voting- 
was  withdrawn.  The  part  embracing  the  title  and  excluding  from  the  pro- 
visions df  the  bill  Ireland  and  Scotland  and  the  Universities  of  Oxford  and 
Cambridge,  was  passed,  and  the  body  of  the  measure  came  to  the  final  issue. 

At  this  juncture,  namely,  in  April  of  1867,  the  Liberal  leaders  had  a 
second  meeting  and  adopted  a  policy  which  they  would  follow  in  what  was 
to  come,  A  resolution  was  prepared  by  them  to  this  effect:  "That  it  be  an 
instruction  to  the  committee  that  they  have  power  to  alter  the  law  of 
rating  ;  and  to  provide  that  in  every  parliamentary  borough  the  occupiers  of 
tenements  below  a  given  ratable  value  be  relieved  from  liability  to  personal 
rating,  with  a  provision  to  fix  a  line  for  the  borough  franchise,  at  which  all 
occupiers  shall  be  entered  on  the  rate  book,  and  shall  have  equal  facilities 
for  the  enjoyment  of  such  franchise  as  a  residential  franchise." 

The  form  of  this  resolution  indicates  that  Mr.  Gladstone  was  its 
author  ;  but  it  was  put  into  the  hands  of  Mr.  Coleridge,  with  instructions 
to  bring  it  forward  in  the  House  of  Commons  coincidently  with  the  motion 
for  groine  into  committee  on  the  bill.  Afterward,  however,  a  smaller 
representation  of  the  Liberals  agreed  that  Mr.  Coleridge  should  present 
only  the  first  part  of  the  resolution,  namely,  that  relative  to  the  law  of 
rating.  A  message  was  sent  to  Mr.  Gladstone  from  the  meeting  assuring 
him  of  the  confidence  and  continued  support  of  his  party.  He  reluctantly 
assented  to  the  change  in  the  resolution  ;  and  the  resolution,  thus  altered, 
was  accepted  by  Mr.  Disraeli. 

Hereupon  Mr.  Gladstone  announced  that  he  had  important  amend- 
ments which  were  not  acceptable  as  instructions,  but  which  he  nevertheless 
should  advocate,  and  at  this  Disraeli  declared  that  if  the  amendments  in 
question  should  be  carried  he  would  not  proceed  with  the  bill.  But  Mr. 
Gladstone's  first  amendment  was  voted  down  by  a  majority  of  twenty-one, 
and  he  receded  from  the  contest.  He  expressed  his  views  on  this  question 
in  answer  to  a  letter  of  inquiry  from  Mr.  Crawford,  one  of  the  representatives 
of  London,  who  wished  to  know  the  intentions  of  Mr.  Gladstone  about 
pressing  his  other  amendments. 
26 


402  LIFE    AN])    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E,    GLADSTONE, 

The  latter  replied  :  ''  The  country  can  hardly  now  fail  to  be  aware  that 
those  gentlemen  of  the  Liberal  party  whose  convictions  allow  them  to  act 
unitedly  on  the  question  are  not  a  majority,  but  a  minority,  in  the  existing 
House  of  Commons;  and  they  have  no.t  the  power  they  were  supposed  to 
possess  of  limiting  or  directing  the  action  of  the  administration  or  shaping 
the  provisions  of  the  Reform  Bill.  Still,  having  regard  to  the  support 
which  my  proposal  with  respect  to  personal  rating  secured  from  so  large  a 
number  of  Liberal  members,  I  am  not  less  willincr  than  heretofore  to  remain 
at  the  service  of  the  party  to  which  they  belong  ;  and  when  any  suitable 
occasion  shall  arise,  if  it  shall  be  their  wish,  I  shall  be  prepared  again  to 
attempt  concerted  action  upon  this  or  any  other  subject  for  the  public  good. 
But  until  then,  desirous  to  avoid  misleading  the  country  and  our  friends,  I 
feel  that  prudence  requires  me  to  withdraw  from  my  attempts  to  assume 
the  initiative  in  amending  a  measure  which  cannot,  perhaps,  be  effectually 
amended  except  by  a  reversal,  formal  or  virtual,  of  the  vote  of  Friday,  the 
iith;  for  such  attempts,  if  made  by  me,  would,  I  believe,  at  the  present 
critical  moment,  not  be  the  most  likely  means  of  advancing  their  own  pur- 
pose. Accordingly,  I  shall  not  proceed  with  the  amendments  now  on  the 
paper  in  my  name,  nor  give  notice  of  other  amendments  such  as  I  had  con- 
templated ;  but  I  should  gladly  accompany  others  in  voting  against  any 
attempt,  from  whatever  quarter,  to  limit  yet  farther  the  scanty  modicum  of 
enfranchisement  proposed  by  the  government,  or  in  improving,  where  it  may 
be  practicable,  the  provisions  of  the  bill." 

The  condition  at  this  juncture  was  quite  chaotic.  Party  discipline  was 
loose  on  both  sides.  An  analysis  of  the  vote  on  the  recent  amendment 
proposed  by  Mr.  Gladstone  showed  a  considerable  defection  in  the  Liberal 
ranks.  The  defection  was  greater  than  appeared  in  the  majority  against 
him  ;  for,  on  the  other  side,  there  was  a  like  breaking  off  of  Conservative 
votes  that  came  over  to  his  side.  Nevertheless,  the  decision  was  against 
him,  and  he  must  accept  it  as  irrevocable. 

We  may  not  pass  from  this  contingency  of  affairs  without  noting  some- 
thing of  its  philosophy.  The  event  as  it  now  stood  seemed  unjust  to  Glad- 
stone in  the  last  degree.  He  had  accepted  the  leadership  of  a  movement 
which  the  country  clearly,  even  emphatically,  promoted.  The  reform  in  the 
franchise  and  in  parliamentary  representation  was  demanded.  Why,  then, 
should  the  House  capriciously  and  invidiously  renounce  Mr.  Gladstone's 
leadership  and  allow  the  prodigious  inconsistency  of  substituting  Mr.  Dis- 
raeli in  his  stead  7  Why  should  Tory  be  put  for  Liberal  in  such  a  contin- 
gency }  Why  should  a  party  be  allowed  notoriously  to  abandon  its  own 
principles  and  take  up  the  principles  of  a  party  which  had  been  discarded  ? 

The  answer  to  these  questions  involves  much  of  the  peculiar  temper  of 
the  British  nation.     That  temper  is  strongly  reflected  in  the  House  of  Com- 


REFORM    151 LL    OF     1 866.  '  403 

mens.  Great  Britain  at  this  juncture  wanted  to  go  forward.  She  wanted 
leadership  to  aid  her  in  going  forward.  She  despised  herself  for  the  neces- 
sity of  going  forward.  Like  a  crab  she  would  rather  have  gone  backward  ; 
but  history  dragged  her  on.  She  was  afraid  to  go.  In  particular,  she  was 
afraid  of  going  too  far.  There  was,  she  thought,  more  danger  of  going  too 
far  under  Liberal  than  under  Tory  management.  She  would  rather  have 
the  hypocritical  substitution  of  a  reluctant  Toryism  to  mark  the  limits  of 
her  advance  than  to  leave  that  matter  to  a  sincere  Liberalism.  These  con- 
ditions caught  up  Mr.  Disraeli  and  brought  him  to  the  fore.  They  also 
caught  up  Mr.  Gladstone  and  sent  him  for  the  time  being  to  the  rear. 

We  resume  the  narrative  of  the  vicissitudes  of  the  Reform  Bill  before 
the  House.  On  the  17th  of  May,  Mr.  Hodgkinson  moved  an  amendment  to 
the  third  clause  of  the  bill,  as  follows  :  "  That  no  person  other  than  the 
occupier  shall  be  rated  to  parochial  rates  in  respect  of  premises  occupied  by 
him  within  the  limits  of  a  parliamentary  borough,  all  acts  to  the  contrary 
notwithstanding."  This  measure,  the  sense  of  which  is  not  easily  under- 
stood in  America,  was  really  radical  in  its  character.  The  system  to  which 
it  referred  had  been  regarded,  as  Archer  says,  and  had  been  represented 
"  as  one  of  the  great  conservative  safeguards  of  the  bill." 

It  was  supposed  that  the  Hodgkinson  amendment  would  be  promptly 
rejected.  There  was  no  expectation  on  the  part  of  either  Conservatives  or 
Radicals  of  any  other  action.  What,  therefore,  was  the  surprise  of  the 
House  when  Mr.  Disraeli,  without  consulting  his  colleagues  and  without 
explanation,  promptly  accepted  the  amendment,  the  result  of  which  was  to 
quadruple  the  number  of  those  who  would  be  enfranchised  by  the  bill  !  It 
was  a  day  of  wonders.  Another  member  moved  that  the  period  of  anteced- 
ent residence  for  the  intending  voter  should  be  reduced  from  two  years  to 
one  year.  This  the  leader  of  the  House,  as  in  duty  bound,  opposed,  and  a 
division  w^as  called  for,  when,  lo,  the  amendment  was  carried  by  a  majority 
of  seventy-three  !  So  astonishing  was  this  result,  and  so  'chaotic  was  the 
condition  which  it  manifestly  indicated,  that  Mr.  Disraeli  said  he  could  not 
proceed  without  consulting  his  colleagues.  It  looked  for  the  nonce  as 
though  the  Tory  ministry,  so  lately  instituted  and  so  ably  manned,  would 
incontinently  topple  down  with  a  crash. 

But  not  so.  The  subtle  and  thoroughly  adaptable  Mr.  Disraeli  came 
humbly  into  the  House  on  the  following  night  and  announced  that  the  gov- 
ernment would  accept  the  decision  of  Parliament  and  persevere  with  the  bill 
in  hand  !  Thus  the  measure  went  forward,  all  the  time  improving.  The 
Liberal  leaders  began  to  take  heart.  First  there  was  a  concession  of  a  ten- 
pound  limit  for  the  lodger  franchise  ;  and  then  what  were  called  the  "fancy 
franchises"  were  abandoned.  In  the  next  place  a  measure  prevailed 
whereby  the  number  of  boroughs   condemned  to  the  loss  of  one  of  their 


404  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

representatives,  for  the  very  good  reason  that -they  were  over-represented 
already,  was  increased  to  forty-six.  The  House  thus  gained  the  number  of 
seats  just  named  for  equitable  distribution. 

Two  of  the  seats  thus  gained  were  assigned  to  Hackney;  two  were 
given  to  Chelsea,  with  which  Kensington  was  joined;  one  seat  was  given  to 
each  of  twelve  boroughs,  not  one  of  which  was  at  the  present  represented 
at  all  ;  one  seat  each  was  added  to  West  Kent,  North  Lancashire,  and  East 
Surrey ;  South  Lancashire  was  divided  into  two  representations  ;  and  Lin- 
colnshire, Derbyshire,  Devonshire,  Somersetshire,  the  West  Riding  of 
Yorkshire,  Cheshire,  Norfolk,  Staffordshire,  and  Essex  were  each  made  into 
three  electoral  districts,  and  to  each  district  two  members  were  assigned. 
As  to  the  two  universities  (London  and  Durham),  they  were  put  together, 
and  one  representative  was  assigned  thereto  instead  of  to  London  Uni- 
versity alone,  as  hitherto.  The  last  clause,  however,  was  modified  by  re- 
serving the  seat  in  question  for  the  University  of  London  alone. 

Perhaps  there  never  has  been  a  time  at  which  the  House  of  Commons, 
irrespective  of  ministerial  arrangement  and  party  dictation,  went  forward 
in  its  own  way  more  resolutely  than  at  the  crisis  of  1867.  Amendments 
were  freely  made  to  the  bill,  and  the  most  astonishing  propositions  spring- 
ing from  the  opposition  began  to  be  accepted  by  the  leader  of  the  House 
representing  the  government.  There  was  much  confusion.  Mr.  Lowe  found 
himself  in  a  remarkable  situation.  The  overthrow  of  the  Russell  ministry, 
instead  of  stopping  the  reform,  as  he  had  hoped,  had  loosed  the  winds. 
He  attacked  the  concessive  spirit  of  the  government  in  the  bitterest  lan- 
guage. He  characterized  himself  as  the  one  six-hundred-and-fifty-eighth 
part  of  the  House  of  Commons,  and  said  that  he  was  ashamed  to  have  the 
government  address  to  him  in  his  fractional  capacity  this  language  :  "  If 
the  House  will  deign  to  take  us  into  its  council,  if  it  will  cooperate  with 
us  in  this  matter,  we  shall  receive  with  cordiality,  with  deference,  nay,  even 
with  gratitude,  any  suggestion  it  likes  to  offer.  Say  what  you  like  to  us, 
only,  for  God's  sake,  leave  us  our  places  !  " 

From  this  juncture  forward  Mr.  Disraeli  became  the  most  obliging 
prime  minister  that  the  House  had  ever  known.  It  appeared  that  he  had 
no  notion  of  resigning  from  office,  though  he  frequently  hinted  at  that  con- 
tingency. On  the  contrary,  he  openly  announced  the  following  unparalleled 
program  :  "  All  I  can  say,"  said  he,  "  on  the  part  of  my  colleagues  and  myself 
is,  that  we  have  no  other  wish  at  the  present  moment  than,  with  the  cooper- 
ation of  the  House,  to  bring  the  question  of  parliamentary  reform  to  a  set- 
tlement. I  know  the  parliamentary  incredulity  with  which  many  may  receive 
avowals  on  our  part  that  we  are  only  influenced  in  the  course  we  are  taking 
by  a  sense  of  duty  ;  but  I  do  assure  the  House,  if  they  needed  such  assur- 
ances after  what  we  have  gone  through,  after  the  sacrifices  we  have  made,  after 


REFORM    BILL    OF    1 866.  405 

having  surrendered  our  political  connections  with  men  whom  we  more  than 
respected,  I  can  assure  them  that  we  have  no  other  principle  that  animates 
us  but  a  conviction  that  we  ought  not  to  desert  our  posts  until  this  ques- 
tion has  been  settled.  .  .  .  We  are  prepared,  as  I  think  I  have  shown,  to  act 
in  all  sincerity  in  this  matter.  Act  with  us  cordially  and  candidly,  and  assist 
us  to  carry  out — as  we  are  prepared  to  do,  as  far  as  we  can  act  in  accord- 
ance with  the  principles  which  we  have  not  concealed  from  you — this  meas- 
ure, which  we  hope  will  lead  to  a  settlement  of  the  question  consistent  with 
the  maintenance  of  the  representative  character  of  this  House.  Act  with 
us,  I  say,  cordially  and  candidly  ;  you  will  find  on  our  side  complete  reci- 
procity of  feeling.     Pass  the  bill,  then  change  the  ministry  if  you  like." 

This  was  extraordinary  language  to  be  employed  by  a  leader  of  a  great 
political  party  and  Prime  Minister  of  England.  But  there  was  much  good 
loeic  in  it.  Time  and  aofain  Mr.  Disraeli  receded  from  one  orround  to 
occupy  another.  Frequently  it  appeared  that  he  was  prime  minister  only 
by  the  courtesy  of  the  majority  against  him  ;  but  he  held  on  to  the  reins 
of  government  It  became  more  and  more  evident  that  he  was  the  govern- 
ment— that  his  colleagues,  including  Lord  Derby,  had  yielded  to  his  impe- 
rious but  complaisant  will.  Though  he  seemed  to  be  constantly  defeated 
he  nevertheless  retained  the  field  and  continued  to  look  like  a  victor. 

This  was  vexatious.  Mr.  Bernal  Osborne  broke  out  against  the  chan- 
cellor of  the  exchequer  as  follows  :  "  I  say  if  we  wish  to  make  progress  with 
this  bill  let  us  have  no  law.  Let  us  rely  on  the  chancellor  of  the  excheq- 
uer. I  say  this  without  any  innuendo  respecting  his  sincerity.  I  always 
thought  the  chancellor  of  the  exchequer  the  greatest  Radical  in  this  House. 
He  has  achieved  what  no  other  man  in  the  country  could  have  done.  As 
I  have  said  before,  he  has  lugged  up  that  great  omnibusful  of  stupid,  heavy 
country  gentlemen — I  only  say  stupid  in  the  parliamentary  sense.  It  is  a 
perfectly  parliamentary  word.  He  has  converted  these  Conservatives  into 
radical  reformers.  In  fact,  the  chancellor  of  the  exchequer  is  the  ministry 
by  himself,  for  it  could  not  exist  a  day  without  him  ;  and  all  the  rest  who 
sit  near  him  are  most  respectable  pawns  on  the  board,  their  opinion  being 
not  worth  a  pin.  When  I  hear  the  chancellor  of  the  exchequer  say  a 
thing  I  know  it  shall  and  will  be  so." 

Other  members  broke  out  in  strains  of  similar  sarcasm  and  invective. 
Lord  Cranborne  (afterward  the  Marquis  of  Salisbury)  threw  down  his  office 
of  Secretary  for  India,  disgusted  with  the  method  of  Mr.  Disraeli.  He  did 
not  hesitate  to  assail  that  gentleman  in  language  like  this:  "  If  you  borrow 
your  political  ethics  from  the  ethics  of  the  political  adventurer  [meaning  by 
innuendo  Mr.  Gladstone]  you  may  depend  upon  it  the  whole  of  your  repre- 
sentative institutions  will  crumble  beneath  your  feet.  ...  I  entreat  honor- 
able gentlemen  opposite  not  to  believe  that  my  feelings  on  this  subject  are 


406  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.  GLADSTONE. 

• 

dictated  by  my  hostility  to  this  measure,  though  I  object  to  it  most  strongly, 
as  the  House  is  aware.  But  even  if  I  took  a  contrary  view,  if  I  deemed 
it  to  be  most  advantageous,  I  should  still  deeply  regret  to  find  the  House  of 
Commons  had  applauded  a  policy  of  legerdemain." 

The  speaker  went  on  to  denounce  the  political  immorality  and  un- 
soundness on  which  the  governmental  scheme  was  founded.  The  method, 
he  thought,  was  contemptible,  whatever  might  be  the  merits  of  the  meas- 
ure. He  was  sorry  to  think  that  the  alleged  great  boon  of  a  Reform  Bill 
should  be  bought  as  if  in  the  market,  with  a  political  treason  which  could 
not  be  paralleled  in  the  history  of  the  British  Parliament.  It  was  a  betrayal 
of  trust  which  was  fatal  to  that  mutual  confidence  on  which  party  govern- 
ment must  rest  or  have  no  foundation  at  all.  It  was  a  confidence  on  which 
not  only  party  rule,  but  the  freedom  and  durability  of  representative  insti- 
tutions also  rested. 

But  Benjamin  Disraeli,  like  King  John  at  Poitiers,  could  ware  both 
right  and  left.  Such  a  situation  as  that  in  which  he  now  found  himself  was 
well  suited  to  his  o-enius.  He  warded  off  the  attacks  of  the  Adullamites— 
now  as  bitter  toward  him  as  they  had  been  toward  Mr.  Gladstone — and  con- 
tinued his  policy  of  concession  to  the  opposition  until  his  Reform  Bill  was 
perfected,  passed  by  the  Commons,  and  sent  to  the  House  of  Lords. 

In  that  body  the  measure  was  subjected  to  severe  criticism.  Lord 
Derby,  still  nominally  prime  minister,  was  nearing  the  end  of  his  days.  He 
was  in  feeble  health  and  in  his  sixty-ninth  year.  Nevertheless  he  did  what 
he  could  to  support  the  cause  of  his  lieutenant  in  the  House  of  Commons. 
He  also  summoned  Lord  Malmesbury  to  his  aid  in  the  House  of  Lords. 
Two  amendments  were  forced  through  that  body,  by  the  first  of  which  the 
lodger  franchise  was  raised  from  ten  pounds  to  fifteen  pounds.  The  other 
amendment  provided  that  in  any  parliamentary  elections  in  which  three 
members  were  to  be  chosen  the  voter  should  have  the  privilege  of  voting 
for  only  two.  This  was  the  scheme  of  Lord  Cairns  to  restrict  the  suftVage 
at  a  single  point. 

Against  this  business  Lord  Derby  opposed  himself  with  all  his  re- 
maining strength.  He  secured  a  reversal  of  the  vote  raising  the  lodeer 
franchise  ;  but  he  could  not  effect  as  much  with  the  measure  to  give  the 
voter  but  two  ballots  out  of  three  possibilities.  In  the  course  of  the  debate 
Lord  Derby  let  slip  the  intimation  that  the  course  which  he  advocated  was 
necessary  in  order  to  save  the  ministry  from  going  to  pieces.  At  this  Earl 
Russell  found  his  opportunity  of  attack.  Not  without  good  reason  did  he 
call  attention  of  the  lords  to  the  conduct  of  the  government,  or  rather  the 
party  in  power,  as  compared  with  that  of  the  Liberal  ministry  which  he  had 
recently  conducted.  That  ministry,  when  beaten  on  a  bill  less  radical  than 
that  now  pending,  had  resigned  from  office;  but  the  present  ministry,  beaten 


REFORM    BILL    OF    1 866.  4O7 

time  and  again  and  obliged  by  the  n-yijorit)-  to  concede  the  most  radical 
innovations,  still  held  the  reins  of  government  and  refused  to  abdicate. 

Lord  Russell  showed  that  the  Reform  Bill  now  about  to  pass  was  a 
leap  in  the  dark.  He  demonstrated  that  it  was  an  illogical  and  compro- 
mising measure.  On  the  one  hand  it  did  not  admit  the  principle  oi  manhood 
suffrage,  and  on  the  other  hand  it  did  not  allow  the  time-honored  principle 
of  suffrage  based  on  property.  The  present  bill  was  neither  the  one  thing 
nor  the  other.  It  could  not  be  described  as  a  Conservative  measure,  a 
Liberal  measure,  a  Whig  measure,  or  a  Radical  measure.  It  was  a  con- 
glomerate measure  having  in  it  many  and  inconsistent  elements. 

In  spite  of  the  protest  of  the  Liberal  lords,  however,  the  Reform 
Bill  went  through  their  House,  and  was  returned  to  the  Commons.  Here- 
upon Mr.  Lowe  again  broke  out  with  unusual  violence.  His  attack  in  this 
instance  was  directed  mostly  against  John  Bright,  wdiom  he  represented  as 
having  started  a  train  of  conditions  that  could  not  be  arrested.  "  You  can 
never  stop,"  said  he,  "when  once  you  set  the  ball  rolling.  ...  I  believe  it  will 
be  absolutely'  necessary  to  compel  our  future  masters  [meaning  the  new 
voters  of  England]  to  learn  their  letters.  It  will  not  be  unworthy  of  a  Con- 
servative government,  at  any  rate,  to  do  what  can  be  done  in  that  direction. 
I  was  opposed  to  centralization.  I  am  ready  to  accept  centralization.  I 
was  opposed  to  an  education  rate.  I  am  now  ready  to  accept  it.  This 
question  is  no  longer  a  religious  question  ;  it  is  a  political  one.  From  the 
moment  that  you  intrust  the  masses  with  powxr  their  education  becomes  an 
absolute  necessity;  and  I  believe  that  the  existing  system  is  one  which  is 
much  superior  to  the  much-vaunted  continental  system.  But  we  shall  have 
to  destroy  it;  it  is  not  quality,  but  quantity  that  we  shall  require.  You  have 
placed  the  government  in  the  hands  of  the  masses,  and  you  must  therefore 
give  them  education.  You  must  take  education  up,  the  very  first  question, 
and  you  must  press  it  on  without  delay  for  the  peace  of  the  country.  O  that 
a  man  would  rise  in  order  that  he  migfht  set  forth  in  words  that  could  not 
die  the  shame,  the  rage,  the  scorn,  the  indignation,  and  the  despair  with 
which  the  measure  is  viewed  by  every  Englishman  who  is  not  a  slave  to  the 
trammels  of  party  or  who  is  not  dazzled  by  the  glare  of  a  temporar}-  and 
ignoble  success !  " 

The  historical  forces  easily  worked  out  their  own  result,  and  the  Reform 
Bill  was  passed.  The  amendments  adopted  by  the  House  of  Lords  did  not 
stand  for  much  in  the  Commons.  The  proposition  to  give  the  voter  but  two 
votes  in  a  parliamentary  election  in  which  there  were  three  candidates  was 
accepted  by  the  House  of  Commons,  because  that  measure  seemed  to  favor 
the  notion  of  minority  representation.  The  other  amendments  of  the  lords 
were  speedily  rejected.  Nor  did  the  debate  again  break  out  with  the  vio- 
lence that  had  marked  its  former  progress.    Thus  by  a  remarkable  maneuver 


408  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    \VILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

in  political  history  the  Reform  Bill  of  1866-67  became  a  law,  and  by  it  Great 
Britain  went  forward  at  a  tremendous  stride  from  her  media;val  system 
of  representation  toward  a  complete  and  equitable  manhood  suffrage. 

The  House  of  Commons  became  more  truly  than  ever  before  a  repre- 
sentative body.  The  measure  could  not  well  be  claimed  by  either  of  the 
political  parties.  The  Liberal  ministr)',  under  the  leadership  of  Earl  Rus- 
sell and  Mr.  Gladstone,  failed  in  securing  the  adoption  of  the  measure  which 
they  originated  ;  but  the  leaders  of  the  cause  were  enabled  to  force  their 
Tory  opponents  to  occupy  the  abandoned  camp,  and  in  the  jargon  of  the 
times  to  wear  the  discarded  clothes  of  the  Radicals.  The  Reforni  Bill  thus 
came  by  a  double  birth.  The  voice  was  the  voice  of  Jacob,  but  the  hand 
was  the  hand  of  Esau. 

At  this  period  it  chanced  that  the  two  strong  men  of  British  statesman- 
ship, standing  over  against  each  other,  were  each  preceded  by  another  who 
still  bore  the  nominal  honor  of  being  first.  Earl  Derby  was  before  Mr. 
Disraeli,  and  Earl  Russell  before  Mr.  Gladstone.  Both  of  these  distin- 
guished lords  were  now  nearing  the  end  of  the  journey.  At  least  one  had 
come  to  the  close  of  his  pilgrimage  and  the  other  to  the  end  of  his  political 
activity.  Edward  Geoffrey  Smith  Stanley,  known  the  world  over  as  the  Earl 
of  Derby,  was  born  on  the  29th  of  March,  1799,  and  died  on  the  23d  of 
October,  1869,  being  in  his  seventy-first  year.  The  contest  of  the  year  1867 
was  the  last  of  his  battles.  He  resigned  his  place  as  head  of  the  Conserva- 
tive party  in  February  of  1868,  and  was  succeeded  by  Benjamin  Disraeli. 

"  The  Asian  Mystery  "  thus  reached  the  acme  of  distinction  and  honor 
that  might  be  attained  by  a  subject  in  Great  Britain.  If  he  reached  the 
coveted  station  in  advance  of  Mr.  Gladstone  he  had  to  charge  himself  with 
more  than  four  years  of  difference  in  age.  When  he  became  prime  minister 
he  was  already  in  his  sixty-fourth  year,  and  was  somewhat  broken  by  the 
excitements  and  battles  of  life.  He  had  before  him  more  than  twelve  years 
of  remaining  labor  and  rest,  full  of  vicissitudes  and  extraordinary  reverses; 
but  for  the  present  he  had  the  unspeakable  gratification — which  he  was 
modest  enough  never  to  display — of  seeing  himself  the  first  man  of  his  race, 
and  the  first  to  attain  so  powerful  a  station  in  the  domain  of  history. 

Mr.  Gladstone  at  this  particular  juncture  was  rather  in  the  shadows — 
how  soon  to  emerge  we  shall  presently  see.  Earl  Russell,  ceasing  to  be 
prime  minister  in  1866,  continued  the  nominal  head  of  his  party,  but  from 
this  position  he  retired,  leaving  Gladstone  in  the  lead.  The  change  in  the 
captaincy  of  the  opposition  came  just  at  the  juncture  when  Mr.  Gladstone 
miorht  best  avail  himself  of  existinof  conditions  and  work  them  to  the  hio^h- 
est  possible  advantage.  A  situation  had  been  preparing  in  the  history  of 
Great  Britain  that  required  just  such  a  leader — a  situation  well  calculated 
to  compensate  him  for  such  leadership  with  the  highest  rewards  and  honors. 


DISESTABLISHMENT    OF    THE    IRISH    CHURCH.  4O9 

CHAPTER  XXII. 
Disestablishment  of  the  Irish  Church. 

EFORE  entering  upon  the  history  of  the  great  event  to  be 
recorded  in  this  chapter  we  may  notice  some  of  the  side  move- 
ments of  society.  On  the  iith  of  May,  1866,  occurred  the 
collapse  of  the  great  house  of  Overend,  Guerney  &  Com- 
pany (Limited),  in  London.  The  failure  indeed  occurred  on 
the  preceding  day,  but  was  not  announced  until  Friday,  the  nth — a  day  that 
became  known  in  financial  history  as  "  Black  Friday,"  destined  after  three 
years  and  six  months  to  repeat  itself  in  the  great  collapse  of  the  American 
Gold  Exchange  in  New  York,  which  was  also  designated  as  Black  Friday. 

The  London  firm  was  a  discount  house,  its  business  being  to  make 
advances  on  acceptances,  and  the  acceptances  were  made  of  paper.  A 
vast  inflated  scheme  was  thus  created  on  a  basis  of  confidence.  The  paper 
on  which  the  advances  were  made  by  Overend,  Guerney  &  Company  was 
enarly  all  of  the  kind  called  accommodation  paper.  The  business  of  the 
concern  became  enormous,  and  when  the  collapse  came  the  outstanding  lia- 
bilities amounted  to  nineteen  million  pounds.  The  jar  of  the  failure  was 
felt  throughout  the  kingdom.  The  excitement  in  London  was  for  the  time 
tremendous.  An  appeal  was  made  for  assistance  to  the  Bank  of  England 
but  that  conservative  institution  would  not  come  to  the  rescue  of  a  concern 
that  in  the  estimate  of  le^ritimate  bankers  must  be  regarded  as  an  orean  of 
adventure  and  fraud. 

The  losses  entailed  by  the  disaster  and  by  the  other  disasters  that  came 
in  the  wake  were  prodigious.  Nearly  all  similar  institutions  in  England  were 
knocked  down  like  so  many  houses  of  cardboard.  The  event  showed,  how- 
ever, that  the  financial  condition  of  the  country  was  essentially  sound,  and 
the  balance  of  trade  was  not  seriously  affected  by  the  panic.  On  the  night 
of  the  day  in  which  Overend,  Guerney  &  Company  went  to  the  wall  Wil- 
liam E.  Gladstone  was  summoned  to  an  interview  with  the  directors  of  the 
London  banks  and  other  representatives  of  large  commercial  interests,  and 
returning  from  the  meeting  he  announced  to  the  House  of  Commons  that 
the  government  had  decided  to  authorize  the  suspension  of  the  Bank 
Charter  Act.  The  Bank  of  England  went  so  far  as  to  expand  its  loans  and 
discounts  by  more  than  four  million  pounds,  and  at  the  same  time  took  the 
risk  of  reducing  its  reserve  to  about  three  million  pounds. 

Another  thing  to  be  noted  at  this  period  was  the  beginning  of  those 
agitations  which  spring  from  organized  labor.  The  winter  of  1866-67  was 
severe,  and  there  was  much  suffering  among  the  poor.  In  the  eastern  dis- 
tricts of  London   in  such  places  as  Bethnal  Green,  Limehouse,  and   Poplar, 


410  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

the  distress  was  extreme.  The  workingmen,  out  of  employment  and  with 
half-starved  families,  began  to  move  in  an  ominous  manner.  At  Deptford 
there  was  an  incipient  bread  riot.  The  supplies  which  were  furnished  to 
those  out  of  employment  and  to  mendicants  were  insufficient,  and  with  the 
continuance  of  the  bitter  weather  want  and  suffering  increased  to  an  alarm- 
ing extent.  Public  charities  had  to  be  organized,  and  at  this  the  managers 
of  the  workhouses,  according  to  their  manner,  took  umbrage,  many  of  them 
preferring  to  see  the  needy  starve  according  to  law  rather  than  to  see  them 
relieved  in  an  irreeular  manner.  This  condition  of  affairs  had  two  effects. 
One  was  to  stimulate  philanthropy  and  the  other  to  invite  a  strict  inquiry 
into  the  condition  of  the  poor  laws  and  the  best  means  of  their  improve- 
ment. 

We  have  seen  the  accession  of  Mr.  Disraeli  to  the  position  of  prime 
minister  of  England.  This  occurred  in  February  of  1868.  On  his  own  side 
of  the  House  of  Commons  he  had  no  longer  a  competitor.  His  leadership 
was  unequivocal,  and  his  station  seemingly  secure.  The  event  showed  hovv^ 
little  there  is  of  calculated  stability  in  the  affairs  of  men.  Just  at  this 
juncture  Mrs.  Disraeli,  to  whom  the  premier  was  greatly  devoted,  was  taken 
seriously  ill,  and  was  lying  in  that  state  at  the  opening  of  Parliament  in 
November,  1868. 

Moreover,  there  was  a  dangerous  foreign  complication  of  the  govern- 
ment, or  at  least  an  expensive  hazard,  which  had  now  to  be  met.  A  war 
had  broken  out  with  Abyssinia.  King  Theodore  had  taken  Mr.  Rassam, 
the  British  consul  at  Massowah,  and  held  hini-as  a  hostage.  Of  course  this 
could  not  be  tolerated.  Nor  is  it  our  purpose  in  this  connection  to  follow 
the  story  of  the  Abyssinian  war  until  Theodore's  capital  was  taken  and 
himself  done  to  death  by  a  division  of  the  British  army.  Again,  a  so-called 
conspiracy  of  Fenians  in  Ireland  and  America  had  led  to  the  outbreak  of 
violence  in  several  places,  and  the  promoters  of  the  movement  were  charged 
with  crimes  reachinof  as  hiofh  as  assassination.  These  matters  must  be  referred 
to  in  the  Queen's  Address  and  be  immediately  dealt  with  by  the  govern- 
ment ;  so  that  Mr.  Disraeli,  on  coming  to  his  duty  as  prime  minister,  was 
confronted  at  the  outset  with  the  most  serious  difficulties.  It  was  already 
known  that  just  behind  the  Fenian  disturbances  the  great  specter  of  the 
Irish  Church  stood,  tall  and  gaunt,  wearing  a  sardonic  smile  and  saying 
"  Look  at  vie  !  " 

It  devolved  on  Mr.  Gladstone,  leader  of  the  opposition,  to  criticise  in 
the  usual  formal  manner  the  address  from  the  throne.  His  manner  in  com- 
ing to  this  task  was  courteous  and  humane.  In  the  first  place  he  expressed 
his  sympathy  with  the  prime  minister  on  the  score  of  the  painful  circum- 
stances under  which  he  was  placed.  This  was  really  a  touching  allusion  to 
the  dangerous  sickness  of  his  wife.     Mr.  Gladstone   said  that  he  would  for 


DISESTABLISHMENT    OF    THE    IRISH    CHURCH.  4II 

the  present  refrain  from  presenting-  certain  questions  which  he  had  in  mind 
relative  to  matters  that  had  occurred  during  the  recess  of  Parliament.  As 
to  the  war  in  Abyssinia,  the  government  must  be  regarded  as  wholly 
responsible  for  that  event  ;  for  it  had  occurred  since  the  adjournment  of 
Parliament.  The  House,  therefore,  could  have  for  the  present  no  responsi- 
bility therefor. 

The  speaker  said,  however,  that  the  House  should  certainly  require  a 
conviction  that  the  war  had  been  undertaken  for  a  justifiable  end,  and  that 
the  end  might  be  reached  with  the  means  at  hand.  He  suggested  that  the 
Abyssinians  might  prove  to  be  an  elusive  enemy  who  would  slip  away  from 
the  issue  of  battle.  Parliament  would  insist  also  that  the  purpose  of  the 
war  was,  negatively,  not  a  conquest  for  territorial  acquisition,  and  that  it  was 
not  intended  to  complicate  the  government  of  Great  Britain  with  new  rela- 
tions and  new  troubles  in  the  East. 

As  for  the  rest,  Mr.  Gladstone  urged  the  government  to  rely  on  the 
House  as  to  the  means  requisite  for  prosecuting  the  war  to  an  honorable 
conclusion,  and  not  to  resort  to  the  expedient  of  increasing  the  national 
debt.  In  the  rntxt  place  he  was  pleased  to  hear  the  reference  in  the  address 
to  the  termination  of  the  troubles  in  Italy  and  of  the  purpose  to  put  down 
the  lawless  outbreakings  of  Fenianism  in  Ireland.  He  hoped,  however,  and 
expected,  that  the  recent  reformatory  measures  of  Parliament  would  be 
quickly  extended  into  Ireland;  that  the  land  question  in  that  country  might 
be  got  on  a  better  basis  ;  and  that  (which  was  most  significant)  the  prevail- 
ing rumor  that  the  Irish  Church  Commission  was  about  to  draw  up  plans 
for  the  reorganization  of  the  Establishment  in  Ireland  zuas  witJi02it  foiin- 
da  t  ion. 

To  this  the  prime  minister  replied  in  fitting  terms.  It  was  manifest  to 
the  House  that  Mr.  FJisraeli  was  sincerely  moved  by  the  touching  reference 
of  Mr.  Gladstone  to  the  affliction  in  his  family.  It  miight  well  reconcile  the 
thoughtful  reader  to  at  least  a  modicum  of  the  unprincipled  violence  and 
outrage  of  political  battles  and  animosities  that  they  are  occasionally  flecked 
with  those  touches  of  human  nature  which  make  the  whole  world  akin. 

The  prime  minister  next  adverted  to  the  difficulty  in  Abyssinia,  and 
said  that  the  prosecution  of  the  war  thus  far  had  been  an  executive  measure 
to  which  the  House  was  not  pledged.  As  to  the  Irish  question,  he  expressed 
the  hope  that  the  government  would  be  able  to  devise  a  measure  which 
would  satisfy  reasonable  demands  oh  the  subject  of  landholding  in  Ireland. 
The  government  would  also  consider  the  Church  question,  but  Mr.  Dis- 
raeli indicated  nothing  as  to  what  the  consideration  might  lead  to.  These 
were  the  principal  features  of  his  reply,  which  was  conciliatory,  prudent,  and 
ivell  received. 

The  Abyssinian  question   pressed  for  a  solution.     The  war  was  on  in 


412  I.IFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

earnest.  Sir  Robert  Napier,  in  command  of  an  expedition  against  Magdala, 
capital  of  King  Theodore,  set  out  on  that  hard  mission  with  an  army  of 
nearly  twelve  thousand  soldiers,  mostly  Hindu  infantry,  and  more  than  that 
number  of  army  followers  and  adventurers.  This  force  advanced  upon 
Magdala  and  reached  that  place  in  the  beginning  of  1868.  The  Abyssinians 
fought  with  great  courage,  but  could  not  stand  before  the  superior  arms  and 
discipline  of  their  assailants.  The  British  force  had  to  make  its  way  against 
an  almost  impregnable  fortress  in  the  rocks.  Roads  had  to  be  cut  up  steep 
slopes,  and  the  artillery  had  to  be  drawn  up  by  mules  and  elephants  and 
relays  of  men. 

Theodore  finally  gave  up  his  prisoners,  but  would  not  surrender.  His 
artillery,  old  and  useless,  burst  at  the  first  fire.  The  assailants  carried  the 
place,  and  Theodore's  chiefs  attested  their  loyalty  by  dying  in  the  gateways. 
The  body  of  Theodore  himself  was  found,  a  grim  smile  on  his  face,  lying 
where  he  had  shot  himself  dead  with  a  pistol  in  the  moment  of  the 
catastrophe.  The  royal  family  was  taken.  The  widow  died  in  the  English 
camp.  Alamayou,  the  son,  seven  years  old,  was  carried  to  India,  and  after- 
ward to  England  ;  but  his  health  gave  way,  and  he  pined  and  died. 

The  usual  glory  came  from  the  expedition.  Sir  Robert  Napier  was 
made  Baron  Napier  of  Magdala.  Mr.  Disraeli,  when  expressing  the  thanks 
of  Parliament  to  the  general  and  his  army,  said  of  Lord  Napier,  w^ith  his 
usual  striking  figures  and  phraseology:  "He  led  the  elephants  of  Asia, 
bearing  the  artillery  of  Europe,  over  broken  passes  which  might  have 
startled  the  trapper  of  Canada  and  appalled  the  hunter  of  the  Alps.  .  .  . 
Thus  all  these  difficulties  and  all  these  obstacles  were  overcome,  and  that  was 
accomplished  which  not  one  of  us  ten  years  ago  could  have  fancied,  even  in 
his  drpams,  and  which  it  must  be  peculiarly  interesting  to  Englishmen  under 
all  circumstances  to  call  to  mind  ;  and  w^e  find  the  standard  of  St.  Georgfe 
hoisted  upon  the  mountains  of  Rasselas."  What  Mr.  Disraeli  said  was  never 
w^anting  in  picturesqueness  and  intellectual  brillianc}'. 

Thus  much  for  Abyssinia.  What  of  Ireland  }  In  that  country  things 
w^ent  from  bad  to  worse.  There  never  had  been  peace.  For  fully  six  hundred 
years  of  political  connection  between  Ireland  and  England  there  had  been 
in  the  former  country  only  distress,  alienation,  and  the  ever-burning  spirit 
of  resentment  and  insurrection.  John  Stuart  Mill,  in  referring  to  the  con- 
dition of  affairs  in  that  country,  when  the  discussion  of  the  Habeas  Corpus 
Acts  was  on,  in  1866,  had  declared  that  if  the  captain  of  a  ship  or  the  mas- 
ter of  a  school  had  been  under  the  constant  necessity  for  a  long  time  of 
having  recourse  to  violent  measures,  "  we  should  assume  without  waiting 
for  further  evidence  that  there  was  something  wrong  in  his  system  of  gov- 
ernment." 

Indeed  there  was  something  wrong.     Almost  everything  was  wrong. 


DISESTABLISHMENT    OF    THE    IRISH    CHURCH. 


413 


The  Fenian  societ)-,  having  its  bifurcations  in  America  and  Ireland,  did  not 
spring  up  without  adequate  cause.  That  great  poHtical  organization,  which 
has  been  the  subject  of  so  much  animadversion,  and  the  very  memory  of 
which  is  so  profoundly  detested  in  England,  had  true  cause  of  its  existence. 
Many  of  its  acts,  no  doubt,  were  lawless,  and  some  were  criminal.  But  it  is 
in  the  character  of  Great  Britain  to  pursue  toward  her  subject  peoples  a 
long  course  of  oppression  and  spoliation,  and  then,  when  her  subjects,  thus 


VISIT   OF   TITHE    PROCTOR   IN    IRELAND. 


wronged,  turn  upon  her,  she  calls  them  rebels,  revolutionists,  incendiaries, 
and  assassins. 

Ireland  at  the  epoch  of  which  we  speak  was  not  suffering  in  all  her 
parts  with  equal  anguish.  The  scourge  of  England  was  laid  most  harshly 
and  unjustly  on  the  southern  quarter  of  the  kingdom.  There  the  old  Celtic 
population  was  oppressed  to  the  last  degree.  There  the  potatoes  were 
tithed,  and  the  hay  was  tithed,  and  the  flax.  Indeed  nothing  was  free  from 
the  ravening  landlords,  wdio  saw  the  starving  peasants,  with  little  compunc- 
tion, scratching  the  poor  earth  with  spade  and  hoe,  in  the  hope  of  keeping 
life  and  paying  rent.  In  the  larger  part  of  Ireland  the  tithes  were  not 
exacted  with  equal  severity.     There  was  great  inequality  in  the  condition  of 


414  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

the  people  ;  but  the  condition  as  a  whole — irrespective  of  the  question  of 
the  foreign  Church  that  rested  upon  them — was  grievous  to  the  full  measure 
of  that  term. 

We  are  not  to  suppose  that  Great  Britain  had  done  nothing  to  alleviate 
the  condition  of  her  Irish  subjects.  Something  had  been  done  to  correct 
by  littles  many  of  the  abuses.  In  1838  the  tithe  system  under  which  the 
country  groaned  had  been  softened  down  into  a  fixed  rental.  Before  that 
date,  namely,  in  1832,  the  cess,  or  Church  rate,  had  been  abolished  ;  but  the 
Protestant  Establishment  was  left  undisturbed,  heavily  bearing  on  a  people 
of  a  different  and  hostile  faith.  In  many  of  the  districts  the  Episcopal 
clergyman,  his  family,  and  his  assistants  were  the  only  Protestant  inhabit- 
ants ;  the  remainder  were  without  exception  Roman  Catholics.  Three 
hundred  years  had  now  elapsed  since  the  Protestant  Church  had  thus  been 
established  for  the  benefit  of  a  fraction  of  the  Irish  people  scarcely  exceed- 
ing one  eighth  of  the  whole,  while  the  other  seven  eighths  had  been  sub- 
jected to  the  expense,  the  despotism,  and,  we  must  say,  -the  insult  of  a 
foreign  Establishment  with  which  they  had  nothing  in  common,  not  even  a 
remote  sympathy. 

This  condition  of  affairs  had  time  and  again  been  brought  to  the 
attention  of  Parliament ;  but  ne^'er  could  that  body  be  moved  to  any 
rational  and  broad-minded  policy  of  reform.  As  early  as  1788  Henry 
Grattan,  the  great  Irish  orator  and  statesman,  had  exclaimed  against  the 
cruel  system  of  secular  and  religious  government  in  his  country.  "  In 
three  fourths  of  this  kingdom,"  said  he,  "  potatoes  pay  no  tithe  ;  in  the  south 
they  not  only  pay,  but  pay  most  heavily.  They  pay  frequently  in  proportion 
tp  the  poverty  and  helplessness  of  the  countrymen.  .  .  .  What  so  galling! 
What  so  inflammatory  as  the  comparative  view  of  the  condition  of  his 
majesty's  subjects  in  one  part  of  the-  kingdom  and  the  other!  In  one  part 
their  sustenance  is  free  and  in  the  other  tithed  in  the  greatest  degree  ;  so 
that  a  orazier  comine  from  the  west  to  the  south  shall  inform  the  latter  that 
with  him  neither  potatoes  nor  hay  is  tithed  ;  and  a  weaver  coming  from  the 
north  shall  inform  the  south  that  in  his  country  neither  potatoes  nor  flax 
is  tithed;  and  thus  are  men,  in  the  present  unequal  and  unjust  state  of 
things,  taught  to  repine,  not  only  by  their  intercourse  with  the  pastor,  but 
with  one  another." 

The  Catholic  Relief  Act  of  1829  and  the  extension  of  the  Poor  Laws 
in  1838  brought  some  relief  to  the  suffering  Irish  ;  but  they  still  remained 
the  poorest,  the  most  miserable,  and  the  most  ill-governed  people  in 
civilized  Europe.  It  seemed  in  vain  that  the  abuses  of  the  Irish  Church 
should  be  one  by  one  eliminated.  The  Irish  Church  was  itself  the  abuse. 
It  stood  in  the  way  of  a  system  of  national  education.  It  was  a  nightmare, 
a  specter,  reigning  with  a  despotism  that  would  have  been  intolerable  among 


DISESTABLISHMENT    OF    THE    IRISH    CHURCH.  415 

any  other  than  a  people  reduced  to  abject  conditions,  both  socially  and 
politically. 

This  question  of  the  Irish  Church,  as  well  as  the  question  of  the  land 
system,  ever  and  anon  obtruded  itself  upon  an  unwilling  government.  It 
came  in  a  threatening  form  as  early  as  the  years  1835-36.  The  echo  of 
it  had  been  heard  as  far  back  as  the  period  of  the  American  Revolution. 
"Truth  and  justice  in  England,"  said  Lord  Russell,  "make  sure  but  slow 
progress;  parliamentary  reform  caused  great  agitation  in  1780,  but  it  was 
not  carried  till  1832  ;  the  slave  trade  provoked  much  indignation  in  i  7S0, 
but  it  was  not  abolished  till  1807.  Measures  to  promote  free  trade  were 
proposed  in  1835,  but  the  work  was  not  completed  till  1862,  even  if  it  can  be 
said  to  have  been  then  complete.  The  Corporation  and  Test  laws  were 
repealed  in  1828;  the  edifice  of  religious  liberty  was  only  completed  b)'  the 
admission  of  the  Jews  to  Parliament  at  a  later  time." 

Such  were  the  antecedents  of  the  great  agitation  which  came  up  un- 
bidden in  the  year  1868.  Let  us  note  with  particularity  what  the  demand, 
or  demands,  of  Ireland  were  at  this  important  crisis.  They  were,  first  of 
all,  that  the  Episcopal  Establishment  in  that  country,  an  institution  alien  to 
the  temper  and  sympathies  of  the  people,  should  be  abolished  ;  that  is,  that 
the  laws  for  the  establishment  and  support  of  the  English  Church  in  Ireland 
should  be  annulled.  The  second  demand  was  that  a  system  of  national 
education  should  be  provided  in  accordance  with  the  wants  and  actual 
conditions  of  the  people ;  and  the  third  was  that  the  law  of  tenantry  should 
be  so  modified  as  to  concede  the  rights  of  tenants  in  the  improvements 
which  they  might  make  or  had  already  made  on  their  holdings,  and  also  a 
modification  in  the  law  which  would  establish  general  equity  between  the 
landlord  and  the  tenant. 

Of  these  demands  the  most  difficult  to  meet  was  that  with  respect  to  the 
Irish  Church  ;  but  the  most  pressing  was  the  question  of  the  land  tenure. 
It  was  the  land  question  that  had  led  to  Fenianism,  and  that  had,  according 
to  English  definitions,  blossomed  into  crimes.  But  on  the  whole  it  was 
easier  to  deal  with  the  secular  than  with  the  ecclesiastical  concern.  The 
latter  issue  involved  not  only  the  interests  of  the  whole  Establishment,  but 
touched  profoundly  the  prejudices  of  the  British  nation.  The  whole 
ecclesiastical  order  was  in  a  temper  to  take  fire  at  the  first  suggestion  of 
the  curtailment  of  their  prerogatives  and  dominion.  This  order  was  in- 
trenched in  the  social,  civil,  and  political  constitution  of  England.  It  sat  in 
panoply  in  the  House  of  Lords,  and  was  hand  in  hand  with  the  throne. 

We  may  admit  the  misfortune  to  Mr.  Disraeli  and  the  Conservative 
ministry  of  the  sudden  oncoming  of  this  question.  There  were  not  wanting 
persons  who  had  foreseen,  at  a  little  distance,  the  looming  up  of  an  issue 
which    would  demand  an   affirmative  answer    from  the   British   Parliament. 


4l6  LIP^E    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

At  least  two  years  previously,  while  Earl  Russell  and  Mr.  Gladstone  were 
making  a  tour  in  Italy,  they  discussed  the  question  of  the  Church  In  Ireland 
and  its  probable  disestablishment.  Earl  Russell  in  his  notes  left  this 
memorandum  of  the  conversation :  "  I  found  that  he  [meaning  Mr, 
Gladstone]  was  as  little  disposed  as  I  was  to  maintain  Protestant  ascendency 
in  Ireland,  and  from  that  time  I  judged  that  this  great  question  would  be 
safer  in  his  hands  than  mine."  There  may  have  been  from  that  time  forth 
a  quasi  understanding  between  Earl  Russell  and  his  younger  and  abler 
lieutenant  that  the  latter  should  await  the  opportunity  to  agitate  the 
question  referred  to,  and  to  press  it  to  a  solution  in  the  House  of  Commons. 

That  opportunity  came  at  the  spring  session  of  1868.  Mr.  Disraeli  had 
just  taken  the  reins  of  government  from  the  hands  of  Lord  Derby.  Scarcely 
had  Parliament  settled  itself  for  the  business  in  hand  when  a  resolution  was 
offered  by  Mr.  John  Francis  Maguire  that  the  House  should  go  into  com- 
mittee to  take  into  imviediate  considcratio7i  the  condition  of  h^eland.  It  is 
probable  that  such  a  motion  was  not  foreseen  by  the  prime  minister.  When 
the  question  was  seriously  pressed,  and  when  It  became  evident  that  the 
House  was  in  earnest  relative  to  Maguire's  proposition,  It  also  became  evi- 
dent that  the  government  was  not  prepared  to  give  adequate  answer  or  to 
Indicate  any  broad  and  satisfactory  policy  with  respect  to  the  matter  In- 
volved. The  prime  minister  would  have  been  glad,  we  doubt  not,  if  he 
could  have  put  the  question  aside.  The  government  was  In  the  attitude  of 
doubt ;  it  was  pressed  forward  by  unseen  and  unexpected  forces,  and  yet 
durst  not  yield  to  the  pressure. 

The  first  pass  that  was  made  on  the  issue  which  thus  thrust  Itself  into 
the  House  of  Commons  was  by  Lord  Mayo,  Chief  Secretary  for  Ireland. 
He  proposed  that  the  question  should  be  met  by  the  process  which  in  the 
jargon  of  the  day  was  called  ''  leveling  up."  By  this  was  meant  the  policy 
of  putting  all  the  denominations  under  governmental  support  and  authority. 
Instead  of  abolishing  the  Episcopal  Establishment  In  Ireland  Lord  Mayo 
would  allow  that  Establishment  to  remain,  but  would  advance  the  other 
sects  to  a  like  relation  of  patronage  and  support. 

The  sequel  showed,  however,  that  Lord  Mayo  did  not  speak  for  the 
government,  but  for  himself  It  also  showed  that  his  proposition  met  with 
little  favor  in  the  House.  In  the  debate  that  ensued  nearly  everybody 
spoke  to  the  Maguire  resolution,  and»paid  but  little  attention  to  the  propo- 
sition of  Lord  Mayo.  For  three  nights  the  discussion  continued.  At  one 
point  in  the  debate  Mr.  Gladstone,  who  was  addressing  the  House,  chanced, 
almost  incidentally,  to  use  the  word  "  disestablishment "  as  a  hint  of  the 
proper  solution.  Hereupon  a  great  applause  broke  out,  and  would  hardly 
stdl  itself  for  the  continuation  of  the  debate.  It  was  evident  that  the  cir- 
cumstance disturbed  Mr.  Disraeli  not  a  little.     He   availed  himself  of  the 


DISESTABLISHMENT    OF    THE    IRISH    CHURCH.  417 

first  opportunity  to  say  that  he  should  resist  with  all  his  power  any  propo- 
sition looking  to  the  overthrow  of  the  Established  Church  in  Ireland.  He 
planted  himself  firmly  upon  what  had  up  to  that  time  been  regarded  as  a 
truism  in  Great  Britain,  namely,  the  principle  of  the  union  of  Church  and 
State. 

If  the  applause  of  the  House  at  the  mention  of  the  word  disestablish- 
ment brought  alarm  to  the  Conservatives  it  apparently  decided  Mr.  Glad- 
stone in  the  course  he  would  pursue.  On  the  fourth  night  of  the  debate  he 
boldly  threw  down  the  gauntlet.  He  said  in  so  many  words  that  in  his 
opinion  the  time  had  come  when  the  Church  Establishment  in  Ireland  must 
cease  to  exist ;  that  is,  cease  to  exist  as  an  institution  supported  by  the 
State.  He  said,  moreover,  that  the  policy  of  leveling  up  the.  other  denomi- 
nations to  the  plane  of  the  Establishment  could  not  be  accepted.  He  ad- 
mitted that  the  attainment  of  reiigious  equality  in  Ireland  would  be  exceed- 
ingly difficult,  but  that  equality  must  be  reached  by  some  means  or  other. 
It  was  necessary  to  promote  the  loyalty  and  confirm  the  union  of  the  Irish 
people  with  the  British  nation  ;  but  it  was  useless  to  try  to  secure  these 
essential  ends  unless  the  unreserved  loyalty  and  devotion  of  the  Irish  could 
be  had. 

The  speaker  then  continued,  as  if  exploring  his  way,  in  these  words: 
"If  we  are  prudent  men  I  hope  we  shall  endeavor  as  far  as  in  us  lies  to 
make  some  provision  for  a  contingent,  a  doubtful,  and  probably  a  danger- 
ous future.  If  we  be  chivalrous  men  I  trust  we  shall  endeavor  to  w^ipe 
away  all  those  stains  which  the  civilized  w^orld  has  for  ages  seen,  or  seemed 
to  see,  on  the  shield  of  England  in  her  treatment  of  Ireland.  If  we  be  com- 
passionate men  I  hope  we  shall  now,  once  for  all,  listen  to  the  tale  of  woe 
which  comes  from  her,  and  the  reality  of  which,  if  not  its  justice,  is  testified 
by  the  continuous  migration  of  her  people— that  we  shall  endeavor  to 

'  Raze  out  the  written  troubles  from  her  brain, 
Pluck  from  her  memory  the  rooted  sorrow.' 

But,  above  all,  if  we  be  just  men  we  shall  go  forward  in  the  name  of  truth 
and  right,  bearing  this  in  mind — that,  when  the  case  is  proved  and  the  hour 
is  come,  justice  delayed  is  justice  denied." 

The  apparition  of  this  great  subject  before  the  House  was  sufficient  to 
appall  the  government.  Mr.  Disraeli,  not  given  to  quailing,  quailed  before 
it.  He  knew  not  what  to  do.  Perhaps  no  other  in  his  station  would  have 
known  what  to  do.  The  temper  of  the  House  was  already  manifested.  We 
doubt  not  that  it  occurred  to  Mr.  Disraeli,  long-headed  and  adroit  as  he 
was,  to  adopt  again  the  policy  which  he  had  used  so  successfully  in  the  case 
of  the  Reform  Bill ;  that  is,  go  over  per  saltiim  to  the  position  of  the  Lib- 
erals and  outdo  them  on  their  own  ground.  But  could  he  perform  this  feat 
27 


i 


418 


LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 


DISESTAIJLJSILMENT    OF    THE    IRISH    CHURCH, 


419 


again  ?  That  method  might  be  successful  once,  but  could  hardly  prevail  a 
second  time.  It  might  be  successful  when  it  came — as  it  did  in  the  last  in- 
stance— as  the  climax  of  a  ministerial  revolution.  At  such  a  juncture  a  prime 
minister  coming  into  authority  might  indeed  vault  over  into  the  camp  of  the 
disorganized  opposition  and  make  battle  from  their  line.  But  this  method 
could  hardly  be  employed  again  by  the  very  minister  who  had  successfully 
used  it  once  under  favoring  conditions. 

Therefore  Mr.  Disraeli  must  oppose  the  movement,  even  though  it 
seemed  irresistible.  He  contented  himself  with  the  utterance  of  a  com- 
plaint almost  pathetic  that  the  obtrusion  of  such  a  question  as  that  of  the 
Irish  Church  at  the  very  beginning  of  his  career  as  the  responsible  head  of 
the  government  was  unfair,  if  not  cruel.  Why  should  he  be  suddenly  sum- 
moned to  meet  a  difficulty  that  was  seven  centuries  old  }  No  new  ministry 
ought  to  be  so  treated.  All  the  essentials  of  this  Irish  question  existed 
when  Mr.  Gladstone  was  prime  minister,  and  he  neither  attempted  to 
meet  the  question  nor  indeed  gave  heed  thereto.  He  passed  over  it  as  a 
nullity.  Now  the  right  honorable  gentleman,  having  been  converted  by 
Mr.  Bright  and  his  fellow-radicals  and  social  philosophers,  makes  haste  to 
bring  forward,  almost  at  the  natal  day  of  the  new  government,  an  issue 
which  many  ages  had  not  been  able  to  settle.  Was  this  fair?  Besides,  he 
did  not  admit  what  was  asserted,  namely,  that  the  spirit  of  the  age  was 
against  the  principle  of  religious  endowments.  He  was  himself  personally 
favorable  to  such  endowments.  He  favored  them  in  England  and  in  Ire- 
land. He  was  not  willing  that  the  Irish  Establishment  should  be  destroyed. 
And  thus  and  thus  to  the  end  of  his  address,  which,  since  it  offered  nothino- 
must  in  the  nature  of  the  case  end  in  nothing. 

It  was  now  Mr.  Gladstone's  opportunity  to  press  his  advantage.  He 
saw  that  the  majority  were  with  him.  He  first  induced  Mr.  Maguire  to 
withdraw  his  resolution,  and  then  presented  three  resolutions  of  his  own, 
tirml)-  expressing  his  views  on  the  question  of  disestablishment,  as  follows: 

"  1.  That  in  the  opinion  of  this  House  it  is  necessary  that  the  Estab- 
lished Church  of  Ireland  should  cease  to  exist  as  an  establishment,  due 
regard  being  had  to  all  personal  interests  and  to  all  individual  rights  of 
property. 

"  2.  That,  subject  to  the  foregoing  considerations,  it  is  expedient  to  pre- 
vent the  creation  of  new  personal  interests  by  the  exercise  of  any  public 
patronage,  and  to  confine  the  operations  of  the  Ecclesiastical  Commission- 
ers of  Ireland  to  objects  of  immediate  necessity,  or  involving  individual 
rights,  pending  the  final  decision  of  Parliament. 

"  3.  1  hat  an  humble  address  be  presented  to  her  majesty,  praying  that, 
with  a  view  to  the  purposes  aforesaid,  her  majesty  will  be  graciously 
pleased  to  place  at  the  disposal  of  Parliament  h(*r  interest  in  the  temporali- 


420  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    K.    GLADSTONE. 

ties,  in  archbishoprics,  bishoprics,  and  other  ecclesiastical  dignities  and 
benefices  in  Ireland  and  in  the  custody  thereof." 

Thus,  in  a  word,  was  challenged  the  existence  of  an  institution  having 
a  history  of  about  four  centuries'  duration.  Indeed,  the  institution  in  ques- 
tion was  interwoven  with  others  that  were  much  older.  In  reality  the 
project  of  disestablishment  was  a  challenge  to  the  past.  It  was  a  challenge 
that  the  past  did  not  dare  boldly  to  accept.  There  was  an  attempt  to  go 
around  it,  to  postpone  it,  to  change  its  nature  into  something  other  than  a 
challenge.  Lord  Stanley,  speaking  for  the  government,  made  the  first  pass 
in  the  attempt  to  temporize  with  the  existing  situation.  He  gave  notice 
that  as  soon  as  the  House  should  be  called  into  committee  of  the  whole,  to 
consider  the  question  of  the  Irish  Church,  he  would  move,  "  That  this 
House,  while  admitting  that  considerable  modifications  in  the  temporalities 
of  the  United  Church  in  Ireland  may,  after  pending  inquiry,  appear  to  be 
expedient,  is  of  the  opinion  that  any  proposition  tending  to  the  disestab- 
lishment or  disendowment  of  that  Church  might  be  reserved  for  the 
decision  of  a  new  Parliament."  To  this  proposition  the  adherents  of  the 
government  rallied  with  all  their  power  ;  and  they  were  not  without  hope 
that  the  resolution  might  be  carried  by  a  coup  de  7nain.  It  was  on  the  line 
of  Lord  Stanley's  amendment  that  the  great  battle  was  fought.  We  may 
admit  that  Mr.  Gladstone,  captain  of  the  Liberal  host,  had  the  advantage 
in  the  temper  of  the  House  and  the  growing  sentiment  of  the  nation. 
Better  than  this,  he  had  the  silent  forces  of  history  on  his  side. 

It  was  on  the  30th  of  March,  1868,  that  the  leader  of  the  opposition 
delivered  the  first  of  his  remarkable  speeches  on  disestablishment.  There 
was  in  his  manner  somethinof  of  the  method  of  Webster  in  his  ereat  debate 
with  Hayne,  who,  before  he  began,  called  attention  to  the  Senate  to  how  far 
the  speakers  had  drifted  away  from  the  real  point  at  issue,  and  ended  by 
calling  for  the  reading  of  Mr.  Foote's  resolution  relative  to  the  public  lands. 
Mr.  Gladstone  in  beCTinninor  asked  for  the  readinor  of  the  titles  of  the  acts 
relating  to  the  Church  Establishment  ;  also  the  fifth  article  of  the  Act  of 
Union  ;  also  the  coronation  oath  of  the  sovereigns  of  Great  Britain.  From 
these  fundamental  utterances  and  landmarks  he  proceeded  to  the  great 
debate. 

The  scene  was  such  as  had  been  witnessed  on  many  previous  critical 
occasions  in  parliamentary  history.  The  House  was  crowded  ;  the  aisles 
around  were  filled  with  an  expectant  throng,  as  were  also  the  galleries.  Mr. 
Gladstone  said  that  in  opening  this  great  contention  he  was  but  perform- 
ing a  solemn  duty.  The  laws  which  had  just  been  read  were  a  proper  basis 
for  all  he  had  to  say.  The  great  question  with  which  they  Avere  now  face  to 
face  was  whether  or  not  the  Irish  Church  Establishment  should  cease  to 
exist.     This   question   the  House  should  decide,  and   decide  at  the  present 


DISESTABLISHMENT    OF    THE    IRISH    CHURCH. 


421 


crisis.  If  the  decision  should  be  affirmative,  then  the  Irish  Establishment 
ought  to  cease  in  a  manner  worthy  of  its  character  and  of  the  British  nation. 
Every  proprietary  and  invested  right  in  that  event  ought  to  be  adequately 
recognized  and  equitably  met.  As  to  the  remainder  of  values  after  the  fact 
of  disestablishment  the  same  he  thought  should  become  an  Irish  fund,  and 
should  be  used  for  the  exclusive  benefit  of  the  people  of  Ireland. 

Mr.  Gladstone  then  went  on  to  reply  to  the  complaint  of  Mr.  Disraeli — 
seemingly  well  founded — that  the  question  which  had  now  come  upon  the 


MR.    GLADSTONE    ADDRESSING    THE    HOUSE   OF    COMMONS. 

House  had  been  previously  avoided.  The  prime  minister  had  charged  that 
the  Liberal  party  lately  in  power  had  avoided  the  issue,  but  as  soon  as  the 
Conservative  party  had  come  in  then  the  Liberals,  as  it  were  in  the  first 
day  of  the  Conservative  rdgwie,  had  brought  confusion  to  the  ministry  b)' 
urging  this  time-worn  and  difficult  question  on  the  attention  of  Parliament. 
Mr.  Gladstone  said  that  these  charges  were  unjust.  True  it  was  that 
the  two  great  parties  had  hitherto  avoided  the  question  which  had  now 
come  up  for  solution  ;  but  they  had  been  justified  in  doing  so — this  for  the 
reason  that  public  opinion  had  never  hitherto  approved  of  the  agitation  of 
the  question.  Public  opinion  had  never  hitherto  been  ready  for  the  change. 
Public  opinion    was  now  ready   for  it;  and  it  was   for  this  reason   that  he 


422  LIFE    AND    TIiMES    gF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

appeared  to  champion  the  project  of  disestablishment.  It  was  claimed  by 
the  friends  of  the  government  that  there  had  been  a  great  deal  of  apostasy, 
of  sudden  apostasy,  on  the  part  of  those  who  occupied  the  same  position 
with  himself  There  had  been  no  apostasy.  The  change  which  was  now 
at  hand  had  been  preparing  itself  for  fully  a  quarter  of  a  century. 

The  speaker  in  the  next  place  adverted  to  the  views  which  he  himself 
had  formerly  held  respecting  the  Irish  Church,  and,  indeed,  the  whole 
Church  question.  From  this  he  went  on  to  allay  all  apprehension  relative 
to  depriving  the  Protestants  of  their  properties  in  Ireland.  They  might 
retain  those  properties.  They  might  continue  to  apply  them  to  religious 
purposes  or  to  other  purposes  if  they  desired.  This  principle  ought  to 
extend  to  all  the  tangible  possessions  of  the  Irish  Church.  There  should 
be  an  honest  and  adequate  method  of  compensation.  He  thought  that  per- 
haps two  thirds  of  the  aggregate  value  of  all  the  properties  held  by  the 
Church  in  Ireland  would  remain  to  the  Protestant  communion  as  before. 
Moreover,  the  Act  of  Disestablishment,  instead  of  being  dangerous  to  the 
Church  in  England,  would  be  highly  advantageous  thereto.  It  would 
relieve  the  Irish  Church  from  an  ancient  scandal.  Neither  \vas  the  pro- 
posed disendowment  fatal,  or  even  hurtful,  to  the  maintenance  of  Protestant- 
ism as  a  faith  and  practice  among  the  Irish  people.  He  called  attention  to 
statistics  as  establishing  the  slow  increase  of  Irish  Protestants  under  the 
present  system,  and  proved  that  w^ith  the  same  rate  it  would  require  two 
thousand  years  to  convert  the  Irish  race  ! 

Mr.  Gladstone  insisted  that  the  one  question  for  the  present  was  to 
declare  disestablishment  or  to  refuse  to  declare  it.  The  measure  havingr 
once  been  determined  in  the  affirmative  the  rest  might  be  left  to  another 
Parliamicnt.  The  main  issue,  however,  should  be  no  longer  postponed. 
The  present  crisis  had  been  preparing  itself  for  long  ages.  For  seven 
hundred  years  the  relations  of  the  two  islands  had  been  unfriendly.  The 
two  peoples  had  never  been  at  one.  Now  was  the  time  when  the  way 
should  be  opened  for  their  union  and  unity.  Let  the  House,  therefore, 
boldly  meet  and  settle  the  disturbing  question.  There  might  be  some  who 
would  still  think  it  a  profane  and  unhallowed  act  to  lay  hands  upon  the 
Church  Establishment  of  a  country. 

The  speaker  said  that  he  respected  this  feeling,  this  sentiment,  and 
sympathized  w^ith  it.  "  I  sympathize  w-ith  it,"  said  he,  "while  I  think  it  my 
duty  to  overcome  and  repress  it.  But  if  it  be  an  error  it  is  an  error  entitled 
to  respect.  There  is  something  in  the  idea  of  a  national  establishment  of 
religion,  of  a  solemn  appropriation  of  a  part  of  the  commonwealth  for  con- 
ferring upon  all  who  are  ready  to  receive  it  what  we  know  to  be  an  inesti- 
mable benefit;  of  saving  that  portion  of  the  inheritance  from  private  self- 
ishness in  order  to  extract  froni  it,  if  we  can,  pure  and  unmixed  advantages 


DISESTABLISHMENT    OF    THE    IRISH    CHURCH.  423 

of  the  hio^hest  order  for  the  population  at  large.  There  is  something  in 
this  so  attractive  that  it  is  an  image  that  must  always  command  the  homao-e 
of  the  many.  It  is  somewhat  like  the  kingly  ghost  in  '  Hamlet,'  of  which 
one  of  the  characters  of  Shakespeare  says  : 

'  We  do  it  wrong,  being  so  niajestical, 
To  offer  it  the  show  of  violence; 
For  it  is,  as  the  air,  invulnerable. 
And  our  vain  blows  malicious  mockery.' 

But,  sir,  this  is  to  view  a  religious  establishment  upon  one  side,  only  upon 
what  I  ma)-  call  the  ethereal  side.  It  has  likewise  a  side  of  earth  ;  and  here 
I  cannot  do  better  than  quote  some  lines  written  by  the  present  x^rchbishop 
of  Dublin  at  a  time  \vhen  his  genius  was  devoted  to  the  muses.  He  said, 
in  speaking  of  mankind  : 

'  We  who  did  our  lineage  high 
Draw  from  beyond  the  starry  sky, 
Are  yet  upon  the  other  side 
To  earth  and  to  its  dust  allied.' 

And  so  the  Church  Establishment,  regarded  in  its  history  and  in  its  aim, 
is  beautiful  and  attractive.  Yet  what  is  it  but  an  appropriation  of  public 
property,  an  appropriation  of  the  fruits  of  labor  and  of  skill  to  certain  pur- 
poses, and  unless  these  purposes  are  fulfilled  that  appropriation  cannot  be 
justified.  Therefore,  sir,  I  cannot  but  feel  that  we  must  set  aside  fears 
which  thrust  themselves  upon  the  imagination,  and  act  upon  the  sober  dic- 
tates of  our  judgment.  I  think  it  has  been  shown  that  the  cause  for  action 
is  strong — not  for  precipitate  action,  not  for  action  beyond  our  powers,  but 
for  such  action  as  the  opportunities  of  the  times  and  the  condition  of  Par- 
liament, if  there  be  but  a  ready  will,  will  amply  and  easily  admit  of  If  I 
am  asked  as  to  my  expectations  of  the  issue  of  this  struggle  I  begin  b\- 
frankly  avowing  that  I,  for  one,  would  not  have  entered  into  it  unless  1 
believed  that  the  final  hour  was  about  to  sound — 

']^enit  sit  III  via  dies  ct  incliiciabile  fatiiiii.'' 

And  I  hope  that  the  noble  lord  [meaning  Lord  Stanley]  will  forgive  me  if  I 
say  that  before  Friday  last  I  thought  that  the  thread  of  the  remaining  life 
of  the  Irish  Established  Church  was  short,  but  that  since  Friday  last,  when 
at  half  past  four  o'clock  in  the  afternoon  the  noble  lord  stood  at  that  table, 
I  have  regarded  it  as  being  shorter  still.  The  issue  is  not  in  our  hands. 
What  we  had  and  have  to  do  is  to  consider  well  and  deeply  before  we  take 
the  first  step  in  an  engagement  such  as  this  ;  but,  having  entered  into  the 
controversy,  there  and  then  to  acquit  ourselves  like  men,  and  to  use  every 
effort  to  remove  what  still  remains  of  the  scandals  and  calamities  in  the 
relations  which  exist  between   England   and    Ireland,  and  to  make  our  best 


424  I^IFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

efforts  at  least  to  fill  up  with  the  cement  of  human  concord  the  noble  fabric 
of  the  British  empire." 

Such  was  the  conclusion  of  Mr.  Gladstone's  address.  The  tone  of  Lord 
Stanley's  reply  was  concessive  of  the  first  principle  in  the  argument.  He 
said  that  hardly  one  educated  man  out  of  a  hundred  would  venture  to  de- 
clare that  the  Irish  Church  was  what  it  should  be.  Not  one  out  of  a  hun- 
dred would  say  that  that  Church  was  not  the  origin  of  many  scandals. 
However,  he  objected  to  the  resolutions  offered  by  the  leader  of  the  oppo- 
sition, for  the  reason  that  they  were  simply  destructive.  They  proposed 
nothing  in  a  positive  way.  They  were  equivalent  to  declaring  that  some- 
thing must  be  done  without  indicating  what.  Suppose  the  resolution  should 
be  carried.  Then  what }  There  would  be  a  mere  hiatus.  The  chanofe 
proposed  would  be  sudden.  Indeed,  the  speaker  thought  that  action  in  the 
immediate  present  was  impossible. 

On  the  other  side,  Lord  Cranborne  (afterward  Marquis  of  Salisbury) 
held  that  Lord  Stanley's  amendment  did  not  propose  anything.  It  was  a 
mere  postponement.  It  indicated  clearly  that  the  government  were  afraid 
to  avow  a  policy.  Besides,  the  amendment  offered  by  the  noble  lord  was 
an  ambiguity.  As  for  the  prime  minister,  he  was  as  uncertain  as  the  amend- 
ment proposed  was  ambiguous.  No  one  could  predict,  said  Lord  Cranborne, 
what  the  right  honorable  gentleman  who  conducted  her  majesty's  govern- 
ment at  the  present  time  would  do  under  any  circumstances.  One  might  as 
well  look  to  the  weathercock  of  the  steeple  and  try  to  indicate  how  it  would 
point  to-morrow.  Such  a  method  in  government  was  intolerable.  It  was 
unworthy  and  degrading.  He  himself  would  not  vote  for  the  resolutions 
before  the  House,  but  he  would  not  support  an  amendment  which  was  a 
mere  makeshift  to  postpone  an  overwhelming  question.  To  him  the  govern- 
ment seemed  more  anxious  to  hold  their  cards  well  for  another  year  than  to 
bear  their  legitimate  responsibilities. 

After  this  came  the  speech  of  Mr.  Gathorne  Hardy.  What  he  would 
say  might  be  known  before  it  was  uttered  ;  but  his  address  was  earnest  and 
eloquent.  He  stood  strongly  for  the  past.  He  would  have  the  Irish  Church 
as  much  established  as  ever.  He  declared  that  the  outcry  against  that 
Establishment  was  a  mere  explosion  of  party  spirit.  He  held  that  the  Con- 
stitution of  Great  Britain,  as  deep  down  as  the  Act  of  Union  and  the  coro- 
nation oath,  was  about  to  be  invaded  and  destroyed  by  radicalism. 

This  appeal  called  out  John  Bright,  who  said  in  answer  that  the  Epis- 
copal Establishment  in  Ireland  was  notoriously  a  failure.  If  its  mission  had 
been  to  convert  Catholics  to  Protestantism  it  had  failed.  Instead  of  such 
conversion  the  Irish  Catholics,  under  the  influence  of  the  Establishment, 
had  become  more  Romanist  than  ever;  indeed,  they  were  the  most  intensely 
Romanist  of  all  the  Catholics  of  Europe.     Regarded  as  a  missionary  Church 


DISESTABLISHMENT    OF    THE    IRISH    CHURCH.  425 

the  Irish  Establishment  had  signally  miscarried.  The  general  effect  of  its 
maintenance  had  been  to  foster  anarchy  to  such  an  extent  that  force  was 
now  required  to  subdue  it.  Honorable  members  had  aforetime  been  greatly 
alarmed  at  the  apparition  of  free  trade.  They  had  also  suffered  fright  with 
the  coming  of  parliamentary  reform.  All  such  changes  had  alarmed  the 
Conservative  party,  whose  method  was  to  cry  out,  revolution,  rebellion, 
anarchy  ! 

The  next  speech  was  made  by  Mr.  Lowe,  who  attacked  the  government 
on  the  score  that  its  methods  were  as  crooked  as  its  principles  were  un 
stable.  Under  the  influence  of  the  ministry  the  character  of  the  House  of 
Commons  had  been  injured  in  the  esteem  of  thoughtful  men  and  before  the 
world.  As  to  the  Establishment  in  Ireland,  that  was  a  body  of  death.  The 
speaker  would  remind  the  House  of  the  tradition  of  Mezentius,  the  despot 
who  bound  a  dead  body  to  a  living  one.  It  was  time  that  the  thongs  of  the 
tyrant  should  be  cut  and  the  living  body  be  liberated.  The  speaker  de- 
nounced the  Irish  Establishment  as  a  thing  monstrous,  lagging  superfluous 
on  the  stage. 

As  to  the  Prime  Minister  of  England,  he  came  in  for  his  full  share  of 
denunciation.  Mr.  Lowe  had  discovered  that  he  could  wield  the  flail  of  in- 
vective with  great  success.  No  doubt  he  had  astonished  himself,  as  he  had 
certainly  astonished  the  House,  with  his  abilities  in  this  particular.  He 
charged  that  the  government,  instead  of  initiating  measures,  had  thrown  out, 
"like  the  cuttlefish  of  which  we  read  in  Victor  Hugo's  novel,  all  sorts  often- 
taenia,  for  the  purpose  of  catching  up  something  which  it  may  appropriate  and 
make  its  own.  .  .  .  The  Irish  Church  is  founded  on  injustice;  it  is  founded 
on  the  dominant  rights  of  the  few  over  the  many,  and  shall  not  stand.  You 
call  it  a  missionary  Church.  If  so,  its  mission  is  unfulfilled.  As  a  mission- 
ary Church  it  has  failed  utterly;  like  some  exotic  brought  from  a  far  country, 
with  infinite  pains  and  useless  trouble,  it  is  kept  alive  with  difficulty  in  an 
ungrateful  climate  and  an  uncongenial  soil.  The  curse  of  barrenness  is  upon 
it ;  it  has  no  leaves  ;  it  bears  no  blossoms  ;  it  yields  no  fruit.  Cut  it  down  ; 
why  cumbereth  it  the  ground  }  " 

These  assaults,  coming  from  several  quarters,  would  have  disconcerted 
a  minister  of  unsteady  nerves  ;  but  Mr.  Disraeli  was  not  apt  to  be  discon- 
certed. On  rising  to  reply  he  directed  his  remarks  mostly  to  personal  ends. 
He  hardly  entered  at  all  into  the  general  argument.  He  spoke  briefly  in 
support  of  the  amendment  offered  by  Lord  Stanley,  and  justified  the  govern- 
ment in  its  present  course.  He  then  turned  upon  his  colleague.  Lord  Cran- 
borne,  and  charged  him  with  being  ever  ready  to  impute  unworthy  motives 
to  the  government.  He  said  that  Lord  Cranborne  was  a  man  of  great 
talents,  and  had  the  fatal  gift  of  invective.  He  regretted  that  the  noble 
lord's  ability  in  this  particular  ran  easily  into  sheer  vindictiveness.    His  vigor 


426  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

of  language  was  wont  to  degenerate  into  animosity.  "  I  admit,"  said  Mr 
Disraeli,  "that  now,  speaking  as  a  critic,  and  not  perhaps  as  an  impartial 
one,  I  must  say  I  think  it  [Lord  Cranborne's  style]  wants  finish.  Consider- 
ing that  the  noble  lord  has  studied  the  subject,  and  that  he  has  written 
anonymous  articles  against  me  before  and  since  I  was  his  colleague — I  do 
not  know  whether  he  wrote  them  when  I  was  his  colleague— I  think  it 
might  have  been  accomplished  more  ad  unguemr  It  appears  that  Lord 
Cranborne  had  been  employing  his  vacations  in  writing  some  contribu- 
tions to  the  Quarterly  Review,  in  which  Mr.  Disraeli  and  the  government 
were  handled  without  gloves. 

In  the  next  place,  Mr.  Disraeli  retorted  bitterly  on  Mr.  Lowe.  "When 
the  bark  is  heard  from  this  side,"  said  he,  "  the  right  honorable  member  for 
Calne  emerges,  I  will  not  say  from  his  cave,  but,  perhaps,  from  a  more 
cynical  habitation.'""  He  joins  immediately  in  the  chorus  of  reciprocal 
malignity — 

'And  hails  with  horrid  melody  the  moon.' 

The  riofht  honorable  oentleman  is  a  verv  remarkable  man.  He  is  a 
learned  man,  though  he  despises  history.  He  can  chop  logic  like  Dean 
Aldrich  ;  but  what  is  more  remarkable  than  his  learning  and  his  logic  is 
that  power  of  spontaneous  aversion  which  particularly  characterizes  him. 
There  is  nothing  that  he  likes,  and  almost  everything  that  he  hates.  He 
hates  the  working  classes  of  England.  He  hates  the  Roman  Catholics  of 
Ireland ;  he  hates  the  Protestants  of  Ireland.  He  hates  her  majesty's 
ministers.  And  until  the  right  honorable  gentleman,  the  member  for  South 
Lancashire  [meaning  Mr,  Gladstone],  placed  his  hand  upon  the  ark  he 
seemed  almost  to  hate  the  right  honorable  gentleman,  the  member  for 
South  Lancashire.  But  now  all  is  chancred.  Now  we  have  the  hour  and 
the  man  [again  intimating  Mr.  Gladstone].  But  I  believe  the  clock  goes 
wrong,  and  the  man  is  mistaken." 

Certainly  this  speech  of  Mr.  Disraeli  was  an  example  of  what  the  mem- 
bers of  the  old  French  National  Convention  used  to  call  "  despicable  per- 
sonalities." The  prime  minister,  as  matter  of  fact,  was  cornered,  but  not 
confused.  In  such  situations  he  was  capable  of  doing  the  pathetic  almost 
as  well  as  the  sarcastic  act  In  this  instance  he  went  on  to  declare  that  for 
his  part  he  had  never  attacked  anyone  in  his  life.  That  statement  might 
well  astonish  the  members,  who  after  their  manner  derisively  called  out, 
O,  O  ! "  And  some  added  the  cry  of  "  Peel,  Peel  " — with  a  quick  memory 
of  that  extraordinary  incident  in  which  Mr.  Disraeli  achieved  his  first  par- 
liamentary fame.  Quick  as  thought,  however,  he  added,  "  unless  I  was  first 
assailed."      He  concluded  his  rather  Inconsequential  but  bitter  speech   with 

*  This  phrase  of  "  cynical  habitation"  for  plain  dog  house  is  perhaps  the  greatest  of  all  Latinisms. 


DISESTABLISHMENT    OF    THE    IRISH    CHURCH.  427 

the  assertion  that  the  opposition,  under  the  specious  name  of  Liberalism, 
and  under  the  pretext  of  answering  the  call  of  the  age,  were  about  to  take 
the  reins  of  government.  That  they  might  succeed  in  doing  ;  but  so  long 
as  he  (Mr.  Disraeli)  should  hold  the  responsible  place  of  prime  minister  he 
should,  by  her  majesty's  favor,  to  the  full  measure  of  his  ability,  oppose,  and 
if  he  could  defeat,  the  manifest  purpose  of  the  opposition. 

It  remained  for  Mr.  Gladstone  to  conclude  the  debate,  which  the  reader 
will  remember  was  on  Lord  Stanley's  amendment  to  postpone  the  consider- 
ation of  the  question  of  disestablishment.  The  speaker  said  that  he  could 
not  exactly  discover  the  relevancy  of  the  greater  part  of  the  prime  minis- 
ter's speech.  He  thought  that  a  portion  of  the  address  to  which  the  House 
had  just  listened  must  have  been  the  result  of  an  overheated  imagination. 
The  intention  of  her  majesty's  opposition  was  sufficiently  clear  and  unmis- 
takable. In  so  far  as  he  represented  that  intention  it  was  simply  and  un- 
equivocally to  separate  Church  from  State  in  Ireland.  It  was  his  business 
in  concluding  the  discussion  to  call  on  the  House  to  decide  this  question. 
By  so  doing  the  House  would  clear  the  way  for  future  parliamentary  action. 

Hereupon  a  division  was  ordered  on  Lord  Stanley's  amendment,  and 
the  same  was  defeated  by  a  majority  of  sixty-one.  This  was  sufficienth' 
decisive.  It  might  well  have  terminated  the  existing  government  then  and 
there,  for  the  Stanley  amendment  was  a  ministerial  measure.  In  the  next 
place,  the  motion  came  up  for  going  into  committee  for  the  consideration  of 
the  questions  involved  in  Mr.  Gladstone's  resolutions.  A  motion  to  this 
purport  was  carried  by  a  majority  of  fifty-six.  On  the  whole,  these  votes 
showed  a  tolerable  solidarity  of  both  the  Conservative  and  the  Liberal 
forces.  About  sever,  members  of  the  opposition  went  over  and  voted  with 
the  government,  and  five  Conservatives  returned  the  compliment  by  voting 
with  Mr.  Gladstone.  The  majority  of  the  Liberals  was  more  emphatic  than 
had  been  anticipated.  The  decision  was  so  clear  as  to  indicate  the  resigna- 
tion of  the  ministry,  but  that  event  was  for  the  time  postponed. 

No  sooner  was  the  decision  of  the  House  known  than  the  outside  agita- 
tion ot  the  subject  was  increased  to  the  pitch  of  public  demonstration.  The 
supporters  of  the  Irish  Establishment  secured  St.  James's  Hall,  and  held  there 
a  monster  meeting;  but  this  was  answered  by  a  Liberal  meeting  of  still 
greater  proportions  in  the  same  place.  The  government  sought  to  gain 
something  by  negotiations  with  the  Roman  Catholic  prelates  in  Ireland, 
but  the  movement  was  without  avail.  The  public  mind  was  heated  \\'\\\\ 
the  controversy.  In  many  instances  the  debates  degenerated  into  bitter 
personalities.  Mr.  Gladstone  was  so  severely  assailed  at  this  juncture  that 
he  felt  called  upon  to  make  a  formal  denial  of  certain  and  sundry  charges 
brought  against  him.  One  of  these  was  that  while  he  had  been  in  Rome 
he  had  made  arrangements  with  the  pope   to  overthrow  the  Church    Estab- 


428  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E,    GLADSTONE. 

lishment  in  Ireland.  To  this  it  was  added  that  Gladstone  had  himself  for  a 
long  time  been  a  Romanist  at  heart.  Another  charge  was  that  as  far  back 
as  the  time  of  Sir  Robert  Peel  Mr.  Gladstone  had  resisted  and  prevented 
the  preferment  of  Dr.  Wynter.  The  third  charge  was  that  he  had  publicly 
renounced  the  principle  of  Church  support  in  any  of  the  three  kingdoms. 
A  fourth  was  that,  being  at  Balmoral,  he  had  declined  to  attend  her  majesty 
at  Crathie  Church.  The  fifth  was  that  he  had  received  a  letter  of  thanks 
from  the  Pope  of  Rome.  The  sixth  and  last  was  that  he  was  a  member  of 
a  Hieh  Church  ritualistic  conorreeation.  It  seems  amaziuij  that  Mr.  Glad- 
stone  should  have  felt  called  upon  to  pay  any  attention  to  slanderous 
charges  so  manifestly  and  ridiculously  improbable,  and  indeed  impossible,  as 
those  enumerated. 

At  this  juncture  came  the  Easter  recess  of  Parliament.  When  that 
body  reconvened  the  question  of  Mr.  Gladstone's  resolutions  w^as  at  once 
taken  up.  Meanwhile  in  the  House  of  Lords  Earl  Derby  had  discussed 
the  resolutions  pending  in  the  House  of  Commons,  and  declared  the  same 
to  be  unconstitutional.  Lord  Derby  thought  that  to  ask  the  queen  to  sur- 
render certain  temporalities  which  had  been  discussed  only  in  the  lower 
House  was  a  breach  of  the  Constitution.  This  criticism,  however,  provoked 
sharp  retorts  from  the  opposition  in  both  the  House  of  Lords  and  the 
Commons.  Thus  with  debate  and  varying  vicissitudes  of  controversy  Mr. 
Gladstone's  first  resolution  came  to  vote  on  the  30th  of  April,  1868,  and  was 
carried  by  a  majority  of  sixty-five. 

Hereupon  Mr.  Disraeli  intimated  the  resignation  of  the  government; 
but  after  an  adjournment  he  returned  to  the  House  on  the  4th  of  May  and 
explained  that  the  ministry  had  not  resigned  for  reasons  wdiich  he  offered. 
His  statement  was  that  ministers  had  tendered  their  resignations,  but  had 
done  so  wdth  the  advice  that  if  possible  the  government  should  conduct 
public  business  with  the  aid  of  the  House  until  the  end  of  the  session.  This 
would  presently  arrive,  and  Parliament  might  then  be  dissolved  until  the 
autumn. 

As  matter  of  fact  the  situation  was  so  complicated  as  to  warrant  Mr. 
Disraeli  in  this  course  ;  for  if  Parliament  should  be  dissolved  at  once  the 
new  elections  would  be  held  by  the  constituencies  as  they  now  stood.  The 
new  Reform  Bill  had  not  yet  become  operative.  If,  therefore,  a  new  House 
should  be  elected,  it  would  be  under  the  old  scheme,  and  it  must  thus  expire 
in  so  short  a  time  that  the  benefit,  if  any,  would  not  compensate  for  the 
outlay,  trouble,  and  confusion.  Should  the  ministry  go  forward  under  the 
present  scheme  and  be  defeated  by  failure  of  cooperation  on  the  part  of  the 
House,  there  would  remain  the  necessity  of  an  immediate  dissolution;  but  in 
that  event  the  Reform  Bill  would  have  become  operative,  and  the  new  elec- 
tion would  be  held  by  the  new  constituencies,  under  the  new  apportionment. 


DISESTABLISHMENT    OF    THE    IRISH    CHURCH.  429 

But  this  explanation  could  not  satisfy  the  victorious  opposition.  To 
them  it  appeared  like  arrant  trifling.  Mr.  Gladstone  would  not  concede  the 
correctness  of  the  prime  minister's  course.  Mr.  Lowe  contended  that  two 
distinct  divisions  of  the  House  with  emphatic  decisions  adverse  to  the 
ministry  ought  to  have  sufficed.  Mr.  Bright,  with  his  usual  bluntness, 
charged  the  ministry  with  a  motive  no  higher  than  that  of  keeping  them- 
selves in  office.  He  denounced  the  proposition  of  Mr.  Disraeli  as  nothing 
less  than  an  outrage  on  the  patience  of  Parliament.  He  said  that  the 
prime  minister  under  such  circumstances  had  no  right  to  dissolve  the 
House,  and  he  added  that  the  present  government  of  Great  Britain  was  not 
able  to  carry  a  single  measure,  unless  it  should  be  a  sixpenny  addition  to 
the  income  tax. 

These  criticisms  were  so  severe  that  Mr.  Disraeli  winced  a  little,  and 
presently  explained  that  his  proposition  to  dissolve  Parliament  related  only 
to  the  question  of  the  Irish  Church,  If  there  were  other  subjects  of  disa- 
greement in  the  House,  and  the  government  should  not  have  the  coopera- 
tion of  the  majority,  then  the  ministers  must  again  put  their  resignations  in 
her  majesty's  hands.  All  this  occurred  as  the  sequel  to  the  adoption  of  Mr. 
Gladstone's  first  resolution. 

The  second  and  third  resolutions  were  soon  carried,  with  approxi- 
mately the  same  majorities  as  the  first.  To  these  three  the  author,  before 
the  measure  was  acted  on  as  a  whole,  appended  the  following :  "  That  when 
legislative  effect  shall  have  been  given  to  the  first  resolution  of  this  com- 
mittee, respecting  the  Established  Church  of  Ireland,  it  is  right  and 
necessary  that  the  grant  to  Maynooth  and  the  Regm77i  Donum  be  discon- 
tinued, due  regard  being  had  to  all  personal  interests."  This  proposition 
developed  the  policy  of  the  opposition  still  further,  and  soon  afterward, 
namely,  on  the  14th  of  May,  Mr.  Gladstone  got  leave  of  the  House  to 
present  a  bill  to  prevent  for  the  present  new  appointments  to  the  Irish 
Church,  and  to  restrain  the  ecclesiastical  commissioners  for  Ireland  from 
further  proceedings.  This  proposition  was,  in  parliamentary  jargon,  desig- 
nated as  the  Suspensory  Bill. 

Meanwhile,  however,  the  debates  continued  to  wear  themselves  out  in 
the  usual  manner.  John  Bright  again  spoke  in  strong  denunciation  of  Mr. 
Disraeli.  The  latter  had  animadverted  upon  the  factions  in  the  Liberal 
party,  and  had  spoken  with  some  arrogance  of  his  recent  communications 
with  the  queen;  and  this  Mr.  Bright  resented.  In  his  strictures  he  said: 
"  The  prime  minister  the  other  night,  with  a  mixture  of  pompousness  and 
sometimes  of  servility,  talked  at  large  of  the  interviews  which  he  had  had 
with  his  sovereign.  I  venture  to  say  that  a  minister  who  deceives  his 
sovereign  is  as  guilty  as  the  conspirator  who  would  dethrone  her.  I  do 
not  charge  the  right  honorable  gentleman  with  deceiving  his  sovereign  ;  but 


430 


LIFE    AM)     TIMES    UF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 


if  he  has  not  changed  the  opinions  which  he  held  twenty-five  years  ago, 
and  which  in  the  main  he  said  only  a  few  weeks  ago  were  right,  then  I  fear 
he  has  not  stated  all  that  was  his  duty  to  state  in  the  interview  he  had  with 
his  sovereign." 

The  speaker  further  declared  that  for  a  prime  minister  thus  to  use  his 
sovereign  as  a  sort  of  buffer  in  a  political  battle  for  his  own  advantage  was 
committing  a  high  crime  and  misdemeanor  against  that  sovereign,  as  well 
as  against  the  nation.  Mr.  Gladstone  took  up  the  theme  and  continued  the 
castigation,  saying  that  for  his  part  he  had  never  before  heard  a  prime 
minister  say  anything  that  was  so  much  out  of  place  in  his  relations  with 
the  sovereign.  To  all  this  Disraeli  retorted  in  his  usual  manner,  challeng- 
ing  his  antagonists  to  put  the  charges  which  they  had  presented  to  the 
decision  of  the   House. 

We  here  advert  to  the  two  important  matters  contemplated  in  Mr. 
Gladstone's  fourth  resolution.  The  reader  will  recall,  we  think,  from  a 
former  chapter  the  story  of  the  grant  made  by  Parliament  to  the  Irish 
College  of  Maynooth.  For  many  years  that  subject  had  come  and  come 
again  into  the  House  as  a  hackneyed  issue  of  debate.  The  extreme 
Protestants  were  in  the  habit  of  animadverting  upon  the  Maynooth  grant 
when  they  had  nothing  better  to  discuss.  The  grant  in  question  had  been 
originally  a  contribution  toward  the  secular  education  of  young  men  who 
were  destined  to  the  Irish  priesthood  ;  that  is,  to  the  Roman  Catholic 
priesthood  in  Ireland.  It  was  contended  that  such  young  men  would 
become  teachers  of  the  people,  and  that  it  was  better  that  they  should  be 
educated — whatever  might  be  their  faith — than  that  they  should  be  ignorant. 
The  government  of  Great  Britain  was  thus  in  the  attitude  of  patronizing 
the  servants  of  an  institution  which  they  disclaimed,  namely,  the  Roman 
Catholic  Church  in  Ireland.  If  the  Episcopal  Establishment  in  Ireland 
should  now  be  abolished,  then  certainly  the  Maynooth  grant  ought  to  cease, 
in  order  that  all  might  be  even  in  the  land.  As  to  the  Regium  Domtin, 
that  was  a  grant  of  money  from  the  crown  which  had  been  made  by  every 
sovereign  from  Charles  II  to  Victoria,  with  the  single  exception  of  James 
II,  who  refused  to  make  it.  The  object  of  the  grant  was  to  aid  the  support 
of  Presbyterian  ministers  in  Ireland.  The  means  by  which  this  crown 
grant  was  supported  had,  since  the  days  of  William  HI,  been  derived  from 
the  public  customs  of  Belfast.  The  sum  of  the  Maynooth  grant  and  the 
Regiiim  Domini  was  about  a  million  and  a  quarter  pounds. 

The  measure  for  the  abolition  of  the  two  grants  in  question  was  intro- 
duced in  the  form  of  a  resolution  by  Mr.  Aytoun.  one  of  the  members  for  Scot- 
land. Mr.  Gladstone  sought  unsuccessfully  to  have  the  resolution  withheld 
until  such  time  as  the  greater  question  should  be  decided.  An  angry  and 
tumultuous  debate  arose  over  the  matter  amonof  the   Liberals  themselves. 


DISLSTADLISIIMENT    OF    THE    IRISH    CHURCH.  43 1 

some  of  whom  perceived  that  Mr.  xA.ytoun's  motion  was  putting  the  cart 
before  the  horse.  The  uproar  gave  opportunity  to  Mr.  Disraeh  to  say  that 
the  revolutionists  in  opposition  were  already  quarreling  over  their  spoils — a 
sarcasm  not  warranted  by  the  facts.  At  length  the  Aytoun  resolution  was 
amended  so  as  to  declare  that  when  legislative  effect  should  be  given  to  the 
first  of  the  Gladstonian  resolutions,  then  the  Maynooth  grant  and  the 
RegiiLm  Doimin  should  be  discontinued,  all  personal  interests  being  duly 
regarded. 

At  this  juncture  it  appeared  necessary  to  attend  to  several  items  of 
legislation  which  had  been  deferred.  The  estimates  for  the  support  of  the 
navy  were  already  three  months  overdue,  and  must  be  passed.  It  was 
deemed  essential  that  that  part  of  the  recent  Reform  Bill  extending  the 
provisions  thereof  to  Scotland  should  be  completed.  The  Scotch  repre- 
sentation had  to  be  enlarged.  There  was,  however,  a  strong  feeling  that  the 
House  of  Commons  was  already  sufficiently  numerous  in  its  membership. 
A  measure  was  accordingly  introduced  providing-  that  a  sufficient  number 
of  English  boroughs  having  fewer  than  five  thousand  inhabitants  should  be 
disfranchised,  to  compensate  for  the  additional  seats  assigned  to  Scotland. 

The  project  in  hand  was  to  add  ten  seats  for  that  country.  The 
Reform  Bill,  passed  under  the  auspices  of  Mr,  Disraeli,  had  declared  that 
no  English  borough  should  be  disfranchised  thereby.  In  order  to  save  this 
provision  Sir  R.  Knightley  moved  that  English  boroughs  having  a  popula- 
tion under  twelve  thousand  should  suffer  a  loss  of  one  seat  each,  to  the 
extent  of  ten  seats  in  all  ;  and  this  proposition  the  government  supported  ; 
but  the  measure  was  met  with  an  adverse  vote  by  a  majority  of  twenty-one. 
In  the  next  place  Mr.  Bouverie  moved  that  the  ratepaying  provisions  of 
the  Reform  Act  should  be  repealed  so  far  as  Scotland  was  concerned,  and 
this  measure,  in  spite  of  the  opposition  of  the  government,  was  adopted. 
A  bill  was  also  passed  empowering  the  government  to  purchase  from  the 
private  companies  the  lines  of  electric  telegraph  in  Great  Britain.  Thus  the 
session  reached  its  close,  and  on  the  last  day  of  July,  1869,  Parliament  was 
prorogued. 

The  election  of  a  new  body  was  now  to  be  made  under  the  provisions 
of  the  Reform  Bill  of  1867.  Though  the  election  was  not  to  occur  until  the 
following  November  the  excitement  flamed  up  immediately,  and  the  ques- 
tion was  hotly  on  as  to  the  policy  of  disestablishment  and  of  the  Irish  Reform 
Bill  covering  the  tenant  system  in  Ireland.  In  the  arena  of  dispute  Mr.  Glad- 
stone stood  boldly  forth  as  the  leader  of  the  Liberal  party.  Mr.  Disraeli 
stood  in  like  relation  to  the  Conservative  party.  Both  causes  were  sup- 
ported with  much  activity  by  the  ablest  men  in  the  kingdom.  The  Conserv- 
atives adopted  as  one  point  in  their  tactics  the  defeat  of  Mr.  Gladstone  for 
reelection.     That  statesman  was  now  a  candidate  for  the  district  known  as 


432  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

Southwest  Lancashire.  He  found  himself  antagonized  by  prevaiHng  forces, 
and  though  on  the  hustings  there  appeared  to  be  a  great  majority  for  him 
the  decision  at  the  polls  was  against  him.  Mr.  Cross  and  Mr.  Turner,  the 
Conservative  candidates,  were  chosen  by  a  majority  of  about  three  hundred. 

There  were  shrewd  Liberal  politicians,  however,  who  had  foreseen  this 
result,  and  had  prepared  for  it.  The  electors  of  Greenwich,  without  Mr. 
Gladstone's  solicitation,  put  him  in  nomination  and  elected  him  as  their  rep- 
resentative, along  with  another  Liberal,  Mr.  Alderman  Salomons.  The 
same  tactics  employed  against  Mr.  Gladstone  in  Southwest  Lancashire  were 
successful  in  compassing  the  defeat  of  John  Stuart  Mill,  who  was  succeeded 
by  Mr.  William  Henry  Smith,  a  Conservative.  Sir  Wentworth  Dilke  was 
also  defeated  for  reelection,  but  was  compensated  for  the  loss  of  his  seat  by 
the  election  of  his  distinguished  son,  Charles  Dilke,  afterward  Sir  Charles 
Dilke,  by  the  constituency  of  Chelsea. 

But  on  the  whole  the  Liberals  were  surprisingly  successful.  The  elec- 
tions showed  unmistakably  that  the  nation  was  with  the  Liberal  cause.  Mr. 
Gladstone's  party  was  returned  with  a  majority  of  a  hundred  and  fifteen  in 
the  House  of  Commons.  In  the  boroughs  generally  the  Conservatives  were 
completely  routed  ;  but  in  the  counties  they  still  held  their  own.  Scotland 
and  Ireland  both  gave  large  majorities  for  the  Liberals.  The  majorities  in 
all  three  kingdoms  were  larger  than  had  been  cast  at  any  election  since 
1832.  The  popular  voice  seemed  to  be  overwhelmingly  in  favor  of  the 
measures  to  which  the  Liberal  party  was  pledged. 

One  of  the  first  results  of  this  verdict  was  the  resignation  of  the  Con- 
servative ministry.  Mr.  Disraeli  anticipated  the  meeting  of  Parliament  by 
announcing  his  retirement  from  office.  He  said  in  a  public  circular  that  the 
election  had  shown  conclusively  that  the  existing  government  could  not  rely 
on  the  cooperation  of  the  new  House  of  Commons,  and  that  for  this  reason 
her  majesty's  ministers  had  resigned,  though  they  should  not  fail  in  opposi- 
tion to  present  an  uncompromising  front  to  the  project  of  disestablishing 
and  disendowing  the  Irish  Church. 

On  the  other  side  there  was  nothing  left  but  the  inevitable,  and  that 
was  the  call  of  William  E.  Gladstone  to  be  Prime  Minister  of  England. 
The  queen's  summons  came  on  the  4th  of  December,  1868.  Mr.  Gladstone 
at  once  complied,  and  was  able  on  the  9th  of  the  month  to  announce  the 
first  distinctly  Liberal  cabinet,  as  follows  :  Lord  Clarendon,  Secretary  for 
Foreign  Affairs;  Lord  Granville,  Secretary  for  the  Colonies;  Mr.  Bruce, 
Home  Secretary;  Mr.  Cardwell,  Secretary  of  War;  the  Duke  of  Argyle, 
Secretary  for  India;  Lord  Hatherly,  Lord  Chancellor;  Earl  Kimberley, 
Lord  Privy  Seal  ;  Mr.  Childers,  First  Lord  of  the  Admiralty  ;  Earl  Spencer, 
Lord  Lieutenant  of  Ireland  ;  Marquis  of  Hartington,  Postmaster-General ; 
and  Mr.  Robert  Lowe,  Chancellor  ol  the  Exchequer.     To  which  we  must  add, 


DISESTABLISHMENT    OF    THE    IRISH    CHURCH. 


4: 


marvel  of  marvels,  Mr.  John  Bright,  President  of  the  Board  of  Trade.  To 
conservative  England  it  might  well  appear  that  the  end  of  all  things  was  at 
hand  when  the  Quaker  member  for  Birmingham  was  invited  to  a  seat  in  the 
British  cabinet* 

All  of  the  members  of  the  new  ministry  were  promptly  accepted  by  their 
respective  constituencies.     Mr.  Gladstone  at  this  juncture  delivered  a  speech 


WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 
For  the  first  time  Prime  Minister,  December  4,  1868. 


at  Greenwich,  in  which  he  declared  that  the  Conservative  administration 
now  going  out  of  power  had  melted  away  ;  that  the  late  prime  minister  had 
gone  from  sight  like  a  king  of  snow.     The  speaker  discussed  several  of  the 

*  A  cycle  of  interesting  traditions  grew  up  around  Mr.  Bright's  appointment  to  the  presidency  of  the  Board 
of  Trade.  It  is  said  tiiat  the  queen  was  almost  violently  opposed  to  his  admission  to  oi^ce  ;  but  Mr.  Gladstone 
told  her  majesty  that  it  must  be — that  it  was  necessary  to  his  successful  conduct  of  her  government.  So  the 
queen  yielded.  But  this  was  not  the  worst.  Bright  had  to  be  inducted  into  office,  and  his  Quaker  manners,  and, 
more  than  manners,  his  Quaker  conscience,  were  serious  impediments.  In  the  first  place,  it  was  difficult  to  get  him 
to  accept  the  office.  He  finally  said  that  he  thought  the  time  had  come  when  an  honest  man  might  enter  the 
service  of  the  crown  !  When  it  came  to  the  ceremony  of  kissing  her  majesty's  hand  it  is  said  that  Bright,  against 
all  solicitations,  would  not  kneel  and  would  not  take  off  his  hat.  All  the  other  members  did  tlieir  obeisance  in 
the  usual  manner;  but  the  bluff  Quaker  stood  hatted,  and  kissed  her  majesty's  hand  in  that  attitude,  no  doubt  as 
loyally  as  the  most  loyal  Briton  that  ever  lived  ! 
28 


434  LIFE    ANJ)    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM     E.    GLADSTONE. 

great  projt;cts  that  were  just  ahead.  He  spoke  of  the  necessity  that  would 
rest  on  the  new  Parliament  of  protecting  the  purit)'  of  the  ballot  and  the 
liberty  of  the  elector.  He  said  that  it  would  be  necessary  to  remedy  at  once 
the  evils  and  abuses  which  had  appeared  in  connection  with  the  ratepaying 
provisions  in  the  Reform  Bill.  It  would  also  devolve  upon  the  new  House 
to  handle  the  subjects  of  education  and  of  national  expenditures.  The 
government  must  proceed  to  the  disestablishment  of  the  Irish  Church  by 
proper  enactment.  There  would  be  no  shrinking  and  no  recession,  "  We 
confide,"  said  Mr.  Gladstone.  "  in  the  traditions  we  have  received  of  our 
fathers ;  we  confide  in  the  soundness  both  of  the  religious  and  of  the 
civil  principles  that  prevail  ;  we  confide  in  the  sacredness  of  that  cause  of 
justice  in  which  we  are  engaged,  and  with  that  confidence  and  persuasion 
we  are  prepared  to  go  forward." 

The  reader  must  not  suppose  that  the  passage  of  the  Glaclstonian  reso- 
lutions by  the  recent  Parliament  was  equivalent  to  the  disestablishment 
of  the  Irish  Church.  The  real  battle  remained  to  be  fought.  The  resolu- 
tions which  had  been  adopted  were  simply  academical.  They  declared  an 
abstract  principle  ;  that  is,  in  a  word,  that  it  was  the  opinion  of  the  House  of 
Commons  that  the  Irish  Church  Establishment  should  cease  to  exist.  The 
statutory  enactment  by  which  the  existence  of  that  establishment  was  to  be 
determined  had  yet  to  be  passed.  Aye,  it  had  to  be  prepared.  The  duty 
of  preparing  it  was  devolved  on  Mr,  Gladstone  and  the  Liberal  ministry. 

Meanwhile,  the  old  order  in  England  was  shaken  to  its  profoundest 
depths.  There  was  an  outcry  on  every  hand.  The  organs  of  the  Church, 
both  men  and  newspapers,  were  vociferous  in  their  denunciations.  Reso- 
lutions were  passed  ;  public  assemblies  were  harangued  ;  synods  debated  ; 
and  high  ecclesiastics  stooped  to  vituperation.  All  the  bottles  of  clerical 
wrath  were  poured  out  on  those  who  had  challenged  the  further  existence 
of  the  Church  Establishment  in  Ireland.  One  said  that  such  a  proposition 
was  an  offense  against  Almighty  God.  A  bishop  declared  it  to  have  been 
framed  in  a  spirit  of  inveterate  hostility  to  the  Church.  The  Earl  of  Car- 
rick  thought  it  the  greatest  national  sin  that  ever  was  committed.  An 
archdeacon  told  his  hearers  to  trust  in  God  and  keep  their  powder  dry. 
Another  of  the  same  rank  denounced  the  great  national  sin.  One  doctor 
of  divinity  was  not  able  to  utter  his  destation  of  the  ungodly,  wicked,  and 
abominable  measure.  Still  another  wanted  the  queen  to  prevent  the  destruc- 
tion of  the  Church,  even  if  she  had  to  jeopard  her  crown  in  doing  it.  To 
all  this  tirade  of  unbottled  ecclesiastical  bitterness  the  political  speakers 
and  newspapers  added  other  bitterness  of  their  own.  The  name  of  the 
waters  was  Marah  !  Orangemen  of  Ireland  were  as  furious  as  the  most 
furious  of  all  the  army.  They  said  that  the  Liberal  ministry  was  a  cabinet 
of  brigands.     Mr.  Gladstone  was  a  traitor  to  his  queen,  his  country,  and  his 


DISESTABLISHMENT    OF    THE    IRISH    CHURCH.  435 

God !  And  so  tlie  anathemas  rolled  on  in  ever-increasing  volume,  the 
chief  significance  of  which  was  that  it  must  presently  subside  and  disappear 
forever. 

The  new  Parliament  convened  in  February  of  1869.  By  the  ist  of 
March  Mr.  Gladstone  was  ready  with  his  bill  for  the  disestablishment  of  the 
Irish  Church.  On  that  day  he  entered  the  Commons  of  England  as  a  gen- 
eral and  conqueror.  In  the  explication  of  his  plan  he  consumed  three  hours, 
delivering  one  of  the  finest  legislative  orations  on  record.  It  must  be  con- 
fessed that  Mr.  Gladstone's  style  of  speaking  and  writing  was  frequentl)- 
attenuated  and  somewhat  straggling.  It  lacked  incisiveness  and  condensa- 
tion. We  may  admit  that  it  was  not  as  brilliant  a  style  as  that  of  his  great 
competitor.  But  if  it  was  always  cautious,  and  if  it  moved  slowly,  it  was 
always  certain  and  convincing.  It  was  noted  on  the  occasion  of  the  delivery 
of  the  great  oration  just  referred  to  that  he  had  prepared  himself  with 
unusual  care,  and  that  his  style  came  up  to  the  best  standard  required  in 
such  an  utterance.  Mr.  Disraeli,  who  was  not  likely  to  be  partial  to  his  rival, 
said  that  in  the  whole  speech  there  was  not  a  redundant  word. 

Mr,  Gladstone  began  by  having  read  the  Acts  on  which  the  Estab- 
lished Church  of  Ireland  rested,  the  Act  of  the  Maynooth  grant,  and  also 
the  first  of  the  four  resolutions  the  passage  of  which  he  had  secured  at  the 
previous  session  of  the  House.  His  new  bill,  which  he  now  asked  leave  to 
introduce,  was  entitled  "  An  Act  to  Put  an  End  to  the  t^stablished  Church 
in  Ireland,  to  Make  Provision  in  Respect  to  the  Temporalities  thereof,  and 
of  the  Royal  College  of  Maynooth."  He  began  by  reviewing  historically 
the  question  which  now  engrossed  the  attention  of  Parliament.  He  antici- 
pated the  objections  with  which  the  proposed  measure  was  likely  to  be  met 
by  its  opponents.  He  did  not  fail  to  remind  the  House  that  the  decisive 
step  of  a  declaration  to  abolish  the  Irish  Establishment  had  already  been 
taken.  The  House  was  pledged,  the  campaign  was  begun,  and  it  only 
remained  for  Parliament  to  prosecute  the  great  enterprise  to  a  successful 
conclusion. 

Mr.  Gladstone  next  assured  the  House  that  it  was  not  the  purpose  of 
her  majesty's  government  to  propose  halfway  measures.  It  was  not  the  pur- 
pose of  government  to  postpone  the  issue.  It  was  the  purpose  to  make  the 
action  about  to  be  taken  final  and  complete.  He  then  proceeded  to  analyze 
the  proposed  bill,  and  to  consider  the  same  in  three  parts  :  first,  its  immedi- 
ate effects;  second!)-,  its  eflects  at  a  date  which  the  speaker  fixed  at  the  ist 
of  January,  1871  ;  and  thirdly,  its  effects  when  the  Establishment  in  Ire- 
land should  be  finally  brought  to  its  close  and  should  cease  to  exist. 
Under  the  first  head  the  prime  minister  proposed  the  appointment  of  a 
new  ecclesiastical  commission  to  take  the  place  of  the  one  now  existing  and 
to  hold  office  for  ten  years.     To  this  commission  the  entire  properties  of 


436  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

the  Irish  Church  should  be,  as  it  were,  assigned,  but  the  assignment  should 
be  subject  to  all  equitable  life  interests  held  by  individuals.  The  assign- 
ment would  work,  both  technically  and  legally,  an  immediate  disendowme^it 
of  the  Irish  Church;  but  the  Establishment  would  be  regarded  as  having 
an  existence  up  to  the  ist  of  January,  1871. 

This  distinction  between  disendowment  and  disestablishment  signified 
that  the  organic  union  of  the  Churches  of  England  and  Ireland  would  con- 
tinue to  the  date  named,  and  at  that  date  the  latter,  namely,  the  Church  of 
Ireland,  would  be  severed  and  cease  to  exist.  The  ecclesiastical  courts  and 
the  ecclesiastical  code  would  then  be  abolished  ;  but  if  the  clergy  and  laity 
of  the  Irish  Church  should  desire  for  their  own  convenience  to  continue 
the  voluntary  use  ot  the  existing  laws,  they  might  do  so  ;  that  is,  until  such 
time  as  the  new  order  to  be  provided  for  might  annul  the  remaining  condi- 
tions of  the  old  order.  In  the  interim  there  should  not  be  further  appoint- 
ments made  for  the  Irish  Church,  except  to  such  spiritual  offices  as  would 
not  imply  any  vested  interests  as  conferred  on  the  appointees.  This  prin- 
ciple of  temporary  appointment  should  be  extended  as  far  as  the  bishoprics. 
Any  person  appointed  to  an  episcopate  in  Ireland  should  henceforth 
receive  with  the  appointment  neither  a  crown  living  nor  a  right  of  peerage. 

The  pending  act  contemplated,  said  the  prime  minister,  the  reorgani- 
zation of  the  Irish  Church  ;  that  is,  the  formation  of  an  ecclesiastical  body 
out  of  the  disendow^ed  institution,  which  body,  to  be  known  as  a  "  governing 
body,"  should  confer  with  the  ecclesiastical  commission  with  a  view^  to  gain- 
ing for  the  clergy  and  laity  the  right  of  voluntary  assemblage,  and  this  new 
order  should  be  recognized  by  the  crown.  The  body  thus  formed  should 
become  an  incorporated  institution.  This  might  be  effected  in  the  interval 
of  two  years.  There  would  thus  be  an  ecclesiastical  organization  in  Ireland 
formed  out  of  the  Establishment,  with  full  right  of  concurrent  action  with 
the  ecclesiastical  commission. 

The  speaker  next  proceeded  to  consider  the  disposal  of  the  vested 
interests  of  the  Establishment.  He  conceded  that  the  bishops  and  all  the 
dignitaries  and  beneficed  clergy  of  the  Irish  Church,  as  the  same  now 
existed,  should  be  entitled  to  receive  during  life,  instead  of  the  endowments, 
certain  annuities,  which  should  be  paid  from  the  properties  of  the  Church; 
but  the  ecclesiastics  would  be  expected  to  perform,  as  compensatory  for 
their  annuities,  the  religious  duties  that  might  be  expected  of  their  respec- 
tive offices.  How  much  the  annuities  should  be  would  be  determined  by 
the  ecclesiastical  commissioners  It  was  not  proposed  to  interrupt  the 
bishops  and  other  clergy  in  the  enjoyment  of  their  freeholds  or  the  pre- 
rogatives which  they  held  as  landed  proprietors.  To  this  principle,  how- 
ever, there  were  certain  exceptions.  The  tithe  hitherto  charged  as  a  rental 
should    now    be    paid    to   the   commissioners.     In    the   second   place,  such 


DISESTABLISHMENT    OF    THE    IRISH    CHURCH.  437 

churches  as  had  gone  to  ruin  should  no  longer  be  regarded  as  the  appanage 
of  the  incumbent  ;  and,  thirdly,  that  the  rights  of  peerage  enjoyed  by  the 
Irish  bishops  should  be  abolished  from  date. 

A  special  provision  was  to  be  made  for  the  curates,  some  of  whom 
would  be  dismissed  with  a  gift  and  others  would  be  continued  in  employment 
for  two  years,  with  compensation.  The  compensation,  however,  in  such 
cases  was  to  be  paid  as  usual  by  the  bishops  incumbent.  As  to  private 
endowments,  these  should  remain  intact.  They  would  become  a  marketable 
property  in  conveyance  to  the  new  Church  organization.  These  provisions, 
however,  related  only  to  such  private  gifts  to  the  Church  as  had  been  made 
since  the  Restoration.  They  did  not  include  church  edifices  or  glebe 
houses.  As  to  the  former,  that  is,  church  buildings,  the  governing  body, 
meaning  the  new  organization,  might  either  continue  to  use  them  for  houses 
of  worship,  under  the  voluntary  plan,  or  remove  them  to  other  places, 
according  to  the  suggestions  of  the  situation.  In  the  case  of  a  few  of  the 
great  ecclesiastical  buildings,  including  St.  Patrick's  Cathedral,  these  might 
be  regarded  as  national  memorials,  not  to  be  disturbed,  and  to  such  the 
ecclesiastical  commissioners  might  assign  a  certain  amount  for  their  sup- 
port. Old  churches  no  longer  used  for  worship  and  unfit  for  restoration 
should  be  given  in  trust  to  the  Board  of  Works,  and  suitable  funds  should 
be  set  aside  to  preserve  such  properties. 

The  speaker  said  that  the  disposal  of  the  glebe  houses  was  attended 
with  peculiar  difiiculty.  In  studying  the  subject  he  had  modified  his  own 
views  with  respect  to  them.  The  glebe  houses  ought  not  to  be  regarded  as 
marketable  commodities.  There  had  been  expended  upon  them  a  million 
two  hundred  thousand  pounds  ;  but  their  annual  value  was  not  more  than 
eighteen  thousand  pounds,  and  there  were  charges  against  them  amounting 
to  a  quarter  of  a  million.  He  recommended,  in  view  of  all  the  conditions, 
that  the  glebe  houses  should  be  given  to  the  governing  body  ;  that  is,  to  the 
voluntary  Church  organization,  on  condition  that  that  body  should  pay  the 
charges  against  the  properties  and  have  the  privilege  of  purchasing  the 
glebe  lands  adjacent  on  equitable  terms.  As  to  the  graveyards  connected 
with  the  churches  they  should  go  with  the  churches,  and  should  be  undis- 
turbed ;  but  burial  ofrounds  not  in  connection  with  the  churches  should  be 
assigned  to  the  overseers  of  the  poor. 

The  prime  minister  next  approached  the  exceedingly  difficult  question 
of  the  Maynooth  grant  and  the  Regiuin  Donum.  The  nature  of  these  two 
benefits  we  have  already  explained.  As  to  the  Regium  Donum  the  recip- 
ients, said  Mr.  Gladstone,  should  be  compensated  in  the  same  manner  as 
the  Irish  bishops  who  were  to  be  deprived  of  their  endowments.  He  did 
not  think  that  the  grant  to  the  Royal  College  of  Maynooth  and  to  certain 
Presbyterian  colleges  should  be  immediately  taken  away.     To  do  so  would 


438  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILI-IAM    E,    GLADSTONE. 

work  hardships  and  produce  a  shock  injurious  to  the  cause  of  education  and 
hurtful  to  many  individuals.  He  proposed  that  the  endowments  in  question 
should  be  converted  into  a  fourteen-year  annuity,  and  be  purchased  in  the 
interest  of  the  beneficiaries. 

In  the  next  place  Mr.  Gladstone  took  up  the  great  question  of  extin- 
guishing the  tithe-rent  charges,  and  proposed  that  that  work  should  be 
extended  over  a  period  of  forty-five  years  ;  but  if  the  proprietors  should 
elect  to  have  the  period  reduced  by  one  half  they  might  do  so.  There 
should  be  a  compulsory  sale  of  the  tithe-rent  charges  on  such  terms  as 
would  produce  a  fund  at  four  and  a  half  per  cent.  The  proprietors  should 
be  credited  as  if  with  a  loan  at  three  and  a  half  per  cent  running  for  forty- 
five  years.  Under  this  arrangement  the  tenants  of  the  lands  tithed  should 
have  the  privilege  of  purchase  for  three  years  after  date. 

The  prime  minister  in  the  next  place  set  forth  the  financial  details  of 
the  scheme,  as  the  same  would  appear  when  fitted  to  the  existing  condition. 
The  tithe-rent  charges  would  amount  to  so  much  ;  the  rents  in  perpetuity 
to  so  much  ;  moneys  invested  to  so  much  ;  the  total  sixteen  million  pounds. 
That  was  the  sum,  according  to  Mr.  Gladstone's  calculation,  of  the  present 
value  of  the  properties  of  the  Irish  Church.  The  Bill  for  Disestablishment 
would  dispose  of  the  various  sums,  under  the  heads  already  enumerated,  to 
an  amount  just  about  one  half  of  the  total  valuation.  There  would  remain 
a  balance  of  seven  million  or  possibly  eight  million  pounds  ;  and  the  ques- 
tion of  prime  importance  was  what  should  be  done  with  this  large  overplus. 

Mr.  Gladstone  then  laid  it  down  as  his  first  principle  that  the  balance 
referred  to  should  be  devoted  exclusively  to  the  benefit  of  the  Irish  people. 
In  the  second  place  he  thought  that  the  large  sum  in  question  should  be 
used  wholly  for  other  than  religious  ends.  He  passed  over  in  review  certain 
possibilities  which  were  to  be  rejected  for  good  reason.  The  government, 
he  said,  after  full  consideration,  had  determined  to  apply  the  surplus  in 
question  to  the  relief  of  unavoidable  calamities,  and  to  the  alleviation  of 
such  distresses  as  were  not  already  provided  for  under  the  poor  laws  of  the 
realm.  The  government  would  recommend,  as  provided  in  the  bill,  that  a 
hundred  and  eighty-five  thousand  pounds  be  set  aside  for  the  support  of 
asylums  for  the  insane  ;  also,  twenty  thousand  pounds  annually  for  the  sup- 
port of  asylums  for  the  feeble-minded  ;  also,  thirty  thousand  pounds  annually 
fi)r  training  schools  for  deaf-mutes  and  for  the  blind  ;  also,  fifteen  thousand 
pounds  annually  for  training  schools  for  nurses;  also,  ten  thousand  pounds 
for  reformatories  ;  also,  fifty-one  thousand  pounds  for  the  support  of  county 
infirmaries — making  a  total  annual  expenditure  of  three  hundred  and  eleven 
thousand  pounds.  By  devoting  the  surplus  to  these  ends  great  reforms 
might  be  promoted  and  philanthropic  enterprises  quickened  into  greater 
efficiency.     He  was  confident  that  the  plan  proposed  would  be  accepted  by 


DISESTABLISHMENT    OF    THE    IRISH    CHURCH.  439 

the  nation  as  a  substantial  gain  and  as  an  unselfish  method  of  disposing  of 
the  accumulations  of  the  Irish  Church. 

In  all  this  vast  scheme — in  the  presentation  of  it — Mr.  Gladstone  bore 
himself  courageously  but  modestly.  He  said  that  it  was  possible  there 
might  be  errors  in  his  calculations.  He  should  be  glad  to  accept  corrections 
as  to  such,  or  suggestions  from  an)-  c|uarter  lor  the  benefit  of  the  cause. 
Moreover,  he  hoped  that  the  clergy  of  Ireland,  now  about  to  be  obliged  to 
bear  a  great  change  in  their  condition,  would  meet  the  same  with  equanim- 
itv.  The  chanoe  indeed  was  ijreat.  He  did  not  know  in  what  other  coun- 
try  so  tremendous  a  transformation  had  been  proposed  for  the  ministers  of 
a  religious  communion  who  had  for  many  ages  enjoyed  such  a  position  as 
that  held  by  the  ministers  of  the  Established  Church  in  Ireland,  which 
change  was  now  proposed  for  them.  "  I  can  well  understand,"  said  he,  "that 
to  many  in  the  Irish  Establishment  such  a  change  appears  to  be  nothing 
less  than  ruin  and  destruction  ;  from  the  height  on  which  they  now  stand  the 
future  is  to  them  an  abyss,  and  their  fears  recall  the  words  used  in  '  King 
Lear  '  when  Edgar  endeavors  to  persuade  Gloucester  that  he  has  fallen  over 
the  cliffs  of  Dover,  and  says  : 

'  Ten  masts  at  each  make  not  the  altitude 
Which  thou  hast  perpendicularly  fallen; 
Thy  life's  a  miracle  !  ' 

And  yet  but  a  little  while  after  the  old  man  is  relieved  from  his  delusion, 
and  he  finds  he  has  not  fallen  at  all.  So  I  trust  that  when,  instead  of  the 
fictitious  and  adventitious  aid  on  which  we  have  too  longf  tauo-ht  the  Irish 
Establishment  to  lean,  it  should  come  to  place  its  trust  on  its  own  resources, 
in  its  own  grreat  mission,  in  all  that  it  can  draw  from  the  ener^v  of  its 
ministers  and  its  members,  and  the  high  hopes  and  promises  of  the  Gospel 
that  it  teaches,  it  will  find  that  it  has  entered  upon  a  new  era  of  existence 
— an  era  bright  with  hope  and  potent  for  good.  At  any  rate,  I  think  the 
day  has  certainly  come  when  an  end  is  finally  to  be  put  to  that  union,  not 
between  the  Church  and  religious  association,  but  between  the  Establish- 
ment and  the  State,  which  was  commenced  under  circumstances  little  aus- 
picious, and  has  endured  to  be  a  source  of  unhappiness  to  Ireland  and  of 
discredit  and  scandal  to  England. 

"There  is  more  to  say.  This  measure  is  in  every  sense  a  great  measure 
— great  in  its  principles,  great  in  the  multitude  of  its  dry,  technical,  but 
interesting  details,  and  great  as  a  testing  measure  ;  for  it  will  show  for  one 
and  all  of  us  of  what  mettle  we  are  made.  Upon  us  all  it  brings  a  great 
responsibility — great  and  foremost  upon  those  who  occupy  this  bench.  We 
are  especially  chargeable,  nay,  deeply  guilty,  if  we  have  either  dishonestly, 
as  some  think,  or  even  prematurely  or  unwisely  challenged  so  gigantic  an 


440  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

issue.  I  know  well  the  punishments  that  follow  rashness  in  public  affairs, 
and  that  ought  to  fall  upon  those  men,  those  Phaethons  of  politics,  who,  with 
hands  unequal  to  the  task,  attempt  to  guide  the  chariot  of  the  sun.  But 
the  responsibility,  though  heavy,  does  not  exclusively  press  upon  us  ;  it 
presses  upon  every  man  who  has  to  take  part  in  the  discussion  and  decision 
upon  this  bill.  Every  man  approaches  the  discussion  under  the  most  solemn 
obligations  to  raise  the  level  of  his  vision  and  expand  its  scope  in  proportion 
with  the  greatness  of  the  matter  in  hand. 

"  The  working  of  our  constitutional  government  itself  is  upon  its  trial, 
for  I  do  not  believe  there  ever  was  a  time  when  the  wheels  of  legislative 
machinery  were  set  in  motion  under  conditions  of  peace  and  order  and  con- 
stitutional regularity  to  deal  with  a  greater  question  or  more  profound. 
And  more  especially,  sir,  is  the  credit  and  fame  of  this  great  assembly  in- 
volved ;  this  assembly  which  has  inherited  through  many  ages  the  accumu- 
lated honors  of  brilliant  triumphs,  of  peaceful  but  courageous  legislation,  is 
now  called  upon  to  address  itself  to  a  task  which  would,  indeed,  have  de- 
manded all  the  best  energies  of  the  very  best  among  your  fathers  and  your 
ancestors.  I  believe  it  will  prove  to  be  worthy  of  the  task.  Should  it  fail, 
even  the  fame  of  the  House  of  Commons  will  suffer  disparagement;  should 
it  succeed,  even  that  fame,  I  venture  to  say,  will  receive  no  small,  no  insen- 
sible addition.  I  must  not  ask  gentlemen  opposite  to  concur  in  this  view, 
emboldened  as  I  am  by  the  kindness  they  have  shown  me  in  listening  with 
patience  to  a  statement  which  could  not  have  been  other  than  tedious  ;  but 
I  pray  them  to  bear  with  me  for  a  moment  while,  for  myself  and  my  col- 
leagues, I  say  we  are  sanguine  of  the  issue.  We  believe,  and  for  my  part  I 
am  deeply  convinced,  that  when  the  final  consummation  shall  arrive,  and 
when  the  words  are  spoken  that  shall  give  the  force  of  law  to  the  work  em- 
bodied in  this  measure — the  work  of  peace  and  justice — those  words  will  be 
echoed  upon  every  shore  where  the  name  of  Ireland  or  the  name  of  Great 
Britain  has  been  heard,  and  the  answer  to  them  will  come  back  in  the  ap- 
proving verdict  of  civilized  mankind." 

This  peroration  of  an  address  occupying  three  full  hours  in  its  delivery 
has  been  regarded  as  one  of  the  very  greatest  of  Mr.  Gladstone's  deliver- 
ances. The  scheme  presented  was  satisfying  in  the  highest  degree.  The 
Liberals  were  rejoiced  at  the  success  with  which  their  now  famous  leader 
had  met  the  great  emergency.  Perhaps  no  other  could  have  done  it.  To 
the  Conservatives  nothing  was  left  but  mild  and  desultory  criticism  and 
mere  fault-finding  with  the  scheme  which,  as  a  whole,  was  already  predeter- 
mined by  both  House  and  nation.  The  leader  of  the  opposition  came  to 
his  task  of  criticism  in  a  mood  showing  how  completely  he  recognized  the 
fact  that  the  case  had  gone  against  him.  He  limited  himself  to  making 
a  brilliant  speech.     That   he  was  always   able   to  do.     With  epigram  and 


DISESTABIJSHMENT    OF    THE    IRISH    CHURCH.  44I 

philosophy  and  historical  and  literary  citation  he  was  capable  of  much 
under  the  most  adverse  circumstances. 

The  House  might  always  expect  to  be  entertained  when  Benjamin  Dis- 
raeli had  the  floor.  On  this  occasion  he  made  the  now  well-worn  aro-ument 
in  favor  of  the  union  of  Church  and  State.  He  said  that  the  State  should 
preserve  the  method  of  surrounding  itself  with  the  ecclesiastical  panoply. 
He  urged  that  without  State  support  the  Church  was  likely  to  fall  away 
into  a  sacerdotal  corporation  of  no  influence  in  society.  He  thought  that 
to  divorce  secular  authority  from  religious  concern  was  to  introduce  all 
manner  of  evils.  On  the  other  hand,  the  establishment  of  an  independent 
religious  authority  in  the  State  was  likely  to  result  in  the  creation  of  a 
power  greater  than  the  civil  power — a  thing  intolerable  to  the  British  Con- 
stitution. To  his  apprehension  the  act  of  the  State  in  disendowing  a 
Church  and  seizing  its  revenues  was  simply  a  spoliation  ;  and  in  cases  where 
there  mi^ht  be  a  sfood  reason  for  it  it  was  still  an  act  of  confiscation. 
There  was  no  secular  landlord  who  held  his  titles  by  firmer  right  than  the 
right  of  the  Irish  Church  to  her  possessions.  He  carried  this  suggestion 
into  the  supposed  parallel  furnished  by  the  landless  gentry  of  Ireland, 
demanding  the  confiscation  of  the  estates  of  the  landed  gentry ;  but  the 
House  was  unable  to  see  the  analogy.  On  the  whole,  Mr.  Disraeli's  speech 
was  ineffective.  It  was  marked  with  his  usual  wit — a  kind  of  wit  which,  in 
the  present  instance,  gave  opportunity  to  the  London  Twics  to  describe  it 
as  a  kind  of  flimsiness  relieved  with  spangles  which  suggested  to  the 
beholder  the  skirt  of  Columbine  ! 

The  next  speech  on  the  pending  measure  was  delivered  by  Dr.  Ball,  an 
old  and  strict  Conservative,  who  assailed  the  measure  as  revolutionary.  Dr. 
Ball  declared  his  opinion  that  general  discontent  would  follow  in  the  train 
and  a  great  shock  be  given  to  the  sacred  rights  of  property.  There  would 
come,  said  he,  an  extreme  agitation  of  the  question  of  landownership,  and 
that  question  would  have  to  be  met  with  other  organic  changes  more  radical 
than  those  now  proposed  with  respect  to  the  Church.  Then  came  John 
Bright  in  answer,  challenging  in  his  brusque  manner  the  assertions  of  Mr. 
Disraeli.  That  gentleman  had  proclaimed  the  Irish  Establishment  as  a 
protector  of  religious  freedom  and  toleration.  To  him  (Mr.  Bright)  the 
leader  of  the  opposition  seemed  to  have  a  peculiar  view  of  history.  Like 
Voltaire,  Mr.  Disraeli  had  a  history  from  which  the  facts  were  eliminated,  and 
he  thought  the  text  all  the  better  for  it  !  Mr.  Bright  said  that  the  Irish 
Church  Establishment  had  signally  failed  in  everything  for  which  it  claimed 
to  be  instituted.  Having  failed,  the  question  was  pertinent  whether  it 
would  be  a  misappropriation  of  the  surplus  funds  accumulated  by  the 
great  Establishment  to  apply  them  to  some  humane  and  philanthropic 
objects  such  as  those  described  in  the  bill. 


442  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E,    GLADSTONE. 

"  Do  you  not  think,"  said  Mr.  Bright,  "that  from  the  charitable  dealing 
with  these  matters  even  a  sweeter  incense  may  arise  than  when  these  vast 
funds  are  applied  to  maintain  three  times  the  number  of  clergy  that  can  be 
of  the  slightest  use  to  the  Church  with  which  they  are  connected?  We  can 
do  but  little,  it  is  true.  We  cannot  relume  the  extinguished  lamp  of  reason. 
We  cannot  make  the  deaf  to  hear.  We  cannot  make  the  dumb  to  speak. 
It  is  not  given  to  us  — 

'  From  the  thick  film  to  purge  the  visual  ray, 
And  on  the  sightless  eyeballs  pour  the  day.' 

But  at  least  we  can  lessen  the  load  of  affliction,  and  we  can  make  the  life 
more  tolerable  to  vast  numbers  who  suffer.  ...  I  see  this  measure  giving 
tranquillity  to  our  people,  greater  strength  to  the  realm,  and  adding  a  new 
luster  and  a  new  dignity  to  the  crown.  I  dare  claim  for  this  bill  the  sup- 
port of  all  good  and  thoughtful  people  within  the  bounds  of  the  British 
empire,  and  I  cannot  doubt  that,  in  its  early  and  great  results,  it  w^ill  have 
the  blessing  of  the  Supreme,  for  I  believe  it  to  be  founded  on  those  prin- 
ciples of  justice  and  mercy  which  are  the  glorious  attributes  of  his  eternal 
reign." 

In  the  course  of  the  debate  there  was  a  slight  breaking  away  from  party 
lines  ;  but  the  same  was  not  so  noticeable  as  in  the  discussions  of  the  pre- 
vious Parliament.  Sir  Roundell  Palmer,  a  distinguished  Liberal,  spoke 
against  the  measure  pending  on  the  ground  that  it  was  competent  for  the 
House  to  declare  disestablishment,  but  not  to  disendow  the  Irish  Church. 
He  claimed  that  there  w^as  no  constitutional  precedent  for  disendowment. 
To  enact  a  disendowment  was  to  interfere  palpably  with  vested  rights. 
This  he  could  not  approve  ;  but  he  nevertheless  admitted  what  was  now 
inevitable,  namely,  that  the  bill  would  pass  ;  and  he  went  so  far  as  to  tell 
the  adherents  of  the  Irish  Church  that  they  should  not  follow^  the  advice  of 
Mr.  Disraeli  by  refusing  to  cooperate  with  the  new  ecclesiastical  commis- 
sion. That  the  speaker  thought  w^ould  be  to  jeopard  their  remaining 
rights. 

x^s  for  Mr.  Lowe,  he,  being  now  in  office,  was  no  longer  an  Adullamite. 
His  powers  were  let  loose  in  a  charge  on  Mr.  Disraeli.  He  asserted  in  his 
speech  that  the  Irish  Church  had  so  long  neglected  its  opportunity  of  rec- 
onciling itself  to  the  Irish  people  that  it  had  sinned  away  its  day  of  grace. 
For  years  the  crisis  had  been  coming,  and  it  had  now  come.  It  had  been 
thought  that  the  conditions  in  Ireland  could  not  be  changed.  "But,"  said 
the  speaker,  "the  present  state  of  things  in  Ireland  is  no  longer  unalterable. 
We  can  alter  it,  and  we  will." 

Mr.  Gladstone  could  not  expect  to  go  through  so  great  an  ordeal 
unscathed.     Mr.  Gathorne  Hardy  compared  him  to  Haman.      He  said  that 


DISESTABLISHMENT    OK    THE    IRISH    CHURCH.  443 

the  prime  minister  in  his  malicious  attack  on  the  Irish  Church  had  been 
actuated  by  jealousy.  This  was  proved  by  a  citation  of  Mr.  Gladstone's 
former  views  with  respect  to  the  Church  and  its  place  under  the  patronage 
of  the  State.  Mr.  Hardy  said  that  the  Irish  Church  was  not  a  badge  of 
conquest.  It  was  not  a  stigma.  It  did  not  deserve  to  be  destroyed.  The 
Irish  question  had  not  sprung  from  the  ecclesiastical  side,  but  from  the 
side  of  English  politics.  To  abolish  the  Irish  Church  was  to  loose  the  Act 
of  Union.  If  this  were  done  the  oath  of  coronation  would  have  to  be 
changed  and  mutilated.  The  bill  before  the  House  was  evil  in  the  sight  of 
God  and  man.  It  was  perilous  to  the  interests  of  Great  Britain.  He  (Mr. 
Hardy)  would  denounce  it  and  oppose  it  because  it  was  impolitic  and 
sacrilecjious. 

To  all  this  Mr.  Gladstone  replied  most  effectively  by  saying  that  Mr. 
Hardy's  declaration  reminded  him  of  a  viot  of  Burke,  who  had  once 
characterized  a  like  performance  as  an  attempt  to  draw  an  indictment 
against  a  whole  nation  !  Mr.  Hardy's  description  of  the  condition  of  the 
Irish  people  was  a  libel.  Mr.  Hardy  would  not  recognize  the  insufferable 
evils  which  had  afflicted  that  people,  and  for  which  the  honorable  gentleman 
proposed  no  remedy.  The  government  had  a  remedy,  and  the  government 
would  apply  it.  The  speaker  said  that  Sir  Roundell  Palmer  could  not 
logicall)'  disestablish  without  disendowing.  Neither  would  the  proposed 
measure  in  any  way  affect  the  prerogatives  of  the  crown.  The  attacks  made 
on  the  pending  measure  convinced  him  that  the  government  had  been  wise 
in  pledging  itself  to  such  a  remedy  and  in  bringing  it  forward. 

Then  calling  attention  to  the  lateness  of  the  niorht,  Mr.  Gladstone  said 
that  the  clock  was  already  pointing  to  the  dawn,  and  that  as  rapidly  as  the 
hand  of  the  dial  was  going  forward  to  the  index  of  the  light  so  rapidly 
were  falline  out  the  last  remainine  sands  in  the  existence  of  the  Established 
Church  in  Ireland.  The  speaker  said  further  that  the  government  was  not 
now  opening  the  great  question.  That  was  opened,  he  did  not  doubt,  when 
last  year's  Parliament  declared  the  approaching  doom — a  verdict  that  could 
not  be  recalled.  "  Opened  it  was  further,"  said  the  speaker,  "  when  in  the 
months  of  autumn  the  discussions  which  were  held  in  every  quarter  of  the 
country  turned  mainly  on  the  subject  of  the  Irish  Church.  Prosecuted 
another  stage  it  was,  when  the  completed  elections  discovered  to  us  a  man- 
ifestation of  the  national  verdict  more  emphatic  than,  with  the  rarest  excep- 
tions, has  been  witnessed  during  the  whole  of  our  parliamentary  history- 
The  good  cause  was  further  advanced  toward  its  triumphant  issue  when 
the  silent  acknowledgment  of  the  late  government  that  they  declined 
to  contest  the  question  was  given  by  their  retirement  from  office  and 
their  choosing  a  less  responsible  position  from  which  to  carry  on  a  more 
desultory  warfare  against  the  policy  which  they  had  in  the  previous  session 


444  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

unsuccessfully  attempted  to   resist.     Another  blow   will  soon  be  struck  in 
the  same  good  cause,  and  I  will  not  intercept  it  one  single  moment  more." 

The  clock  was  indeed  about  to  strike  !  It  was  the  morning  dawn  of 
the  19th  of  May,  1869.  The  division  of  the  House  was  called.  The  excite- 
ment rose  to  the  pitch  of  fever,  but  there  was  little  doubt  as  to  the  result. 
The  division  was  on  the  question  of  the  second  reading.  There  were  six 
hundred  and  eighteen  members  answering  to  the  call.  Those  for  the  second 
reading  of  the  bill  were  three  hundred  and  sixty-eight  ;  those  against,  two 
hundred  and  fifty — majority  for  the  government,  one  hundred  and  eighteen. 
The  verdict  was  more  emphatic  than  had  been  anticipated.  An  analysis  of 
the  vote  showed  that  six  Conservatives  had  voted  with  the  Liberals  and 
only  three  Liberals  with  the  Conservatives.  There  were  twenty-one 
absentees  from  the  House  and  fourteen  vacancies  at  the  time.  The  vote 
was  so  decisive,  the  majority  so  great,  as  to  indicate  that  the  future  stages 
of  the  bill  would  hardly  be  attended  with  danger  to  its  final  passage. 
Nevertheless,  the  progress  of  the  measure  was  impeded  as  much  as  might 
be  by  the  opposition,  and  three  months  elapsed  after  the  introduction  of 
the  measure  before  the  third  reading  of  the  bill  was  moved. 

At  this  stage  Mr.  Disraeli  made  another  vain  appeal  to  the  House 
against  the  project  of  disestablishment.  He  said  that  the  measure  was 
tending  powerfully  to  establish  the  papal  ascendency  in  Ireland.  The 
destruction  of  the  Church  in  that  country  was  about  to  produce  a  great 
reaction  in  favor  of  Rome.  He  then  repeated  his  original  objections  to  the 
measure  as  being  against  the  Act  of  Union,  the  coronation  oath,  and  in 
general  inimical  to  the  British  Constitution.  To  this  Mr.  Gladstone  replied 
that  the  measure  which  he  was  promoting  was  the  legitimate  offspring  of 
suggestions  made  by  William  Pitt  and  others  who  were  recognized  in 
British  history  as  the  best  supporters  of  religious  equality.  Besides, 
whether  indorsed  by  the  great  men  of  the  past  or  not,  the  bill  for  disestab- 
lishment was  not  in  its  principles  unjust,  not  illiberal,  and  not  harsh.  It 
was  not  inimical  to  Protestantism  in  Ireland.  There  mip-ht  be  a  feelino-  of 
regret  in  ecclesiastical  circles  that  the  temporal  splendor  of  the  Irish  Church 
had  departed  ;  yet  the  day  M'as  in  the  future  when  men  might  say  of  her 
that  the  glory  of  the  latter  house  is  greater  than  that  of  the  former. 
Protestantism  in  Ireland  would  yet  learn  that  the  Parliament  of  England 
had  been  its  friend,  and  had  manifested  that  friendship  in  the  disestablish- 
ment and  disendowment  of  the  Irish  Church. 

On  the  question  of  the  third  reading  the  majority  for  the  government 
was  one  hundred  and  fourteen.  The  voice  of  the  nation  thus  expressed  was 
conclusive,  and  the  opposition  were  reduced  to  the  necessity  of  merely 
abusing  an  antagonist  whom  they  could  not  overthrow.  At  this  juncture 
the  stories  were  revived  that  Mr.  Gladstone  was  in  leao;ue  with  the  Church 


DISESTABLISHMENT    OF    THE    IRISH    CHURCH.  445 

of  Rome — a  slander  which  he  had  already  refuted,  and  which  in  the  retro- 
spect appears  from  the  first  to  have  been  drowned  in  its  own  absurdity. 
Over  in  the  House  of  Lords  there  was  as  strong  an  opposition  as  was 
expedient  to  the  Irish  Church  Bill.  The  Earl  of  Derby  marshaled  his 
remaining  energies  and  fought  a  last  battle  for  the  past.  In  like  manner 
Lord  Cairns  denounced  the  pending  measure  as  an  invention  of  evil,  a  men- 
ace to  the  welfare  of  society,  and  a  mortal  hurt  to  the  British  Constitution. 

Nor  may  we  pass  from  the  discussion  of  the  subject  in  the  Lords 
without  referring  to  the  great  act  of  Dr.  Connop  Thirlwall,  the  historian, 
Bishop  of  St,  David's,  who,  though  high  in  the  ecclesiastical  order,  came 
with  his  probity  and  learning  to  the  support  of  the  bill  for  disestablishment. 
He  said  that  the  notion  that  church  property  is  in  some  sense  divine  is  a 
heathenish  superstition.  Of  like  kind  he  declared  to  be  those  material 
offerings  which  some  persons  thought  they  might  make  to  Almighty  God  as 
if  to  answer  some  necessity  of  his  nature.  For  his  part,  he  regarded  the 
market  established  at  Spitalfields  by  Miss  Burdett  Coutts  (afterward  the 
Baroness  Burdett-Coutts)  as  being  as  good  a  religious  work,  and  better, 
than  that  of  Mr.  Guinness,  who  was  restorino-  the  Dublin  cathedral  He 
agreed  with  other  speakers  that  the  Protestant  ascendency  in  Ireland  ought 
to  be  maintained,  or  rather  obtained,  and  promoted  ;  but  the  ascendency 
which  he  would  have  should  be  the  ascendency  of  truth  and  reason.  In 
this  spiritual  temple  he  was  sorry  to  say  that  the  Irish  Church  was  not  a 
pillar.  As  to  the  power  of  the  pope  in  Ireland,  he  did  not  believe  in  it,  and 
did  not  fear  it.  He  regarded  the  papacy  as  being  in  its  decline.  The  best 
way  to  uphold  the  papacy  was  to  give  it  a  grievance.  By  that  meaHs  the 
Irish  priesthood  could  plead  their  grievance  and  gain  the  sympathy  of  the 
people.  Without  the  grievance — -which  was  the  Irish  Church — the  argu- 
ment would  be  futile. 

Most  of  the  bishops,  however,  arrayed  themselves  on  the  other  side. 
In  this  rank  was  the  Bishop  of  Peterborough.  In  closing  the  discussion 
Lord  Derby  made  his  final  attack  on  the  bill,  denouncing  it  as  the  fruit  of 
political  folly  and  moral  baseness.  But  his  appeal  was  in  vain.  The  oppo- 
sition could  rally  only  one  hundred  and  forty-six  votes  against  one  hundred 
and  seventy-nine  for  the  government.  Nor  may  we  pass  without  noting 
that  the  Marquis  of  Salisbury  voted  with  the  Liberals  in  this  great  contest. 
There  were  thirteen  English  and  two  Irish  bishops  who  voted  against  the 
bill,  and  several  others  who,  through  their  extreme  animosity,  absented 
themselves  from  the  House  of  Lords,  The  only  bishop  who  stood  with 
the  government  was  he  of  St.  David's,  whose  manly  address  to  the  Lords  is 
mentioned  above. 

In  the  upper  House  the  bill  as  a  whole  was  ultimately  passed  by  a 
majority  of  seven,  though  a  protest  was  prepared  and  signed  by  forty-three 


446  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIA>r    E.    GLADSTONE. 

of  the  temporal  peers  and  two  of  the  spiritual  order.  Among  the  former 
was  Lord  Derby.  The  bill  came  down  to  the  House  of  Commons  with 
several  amendments  from  the  Lords,  but  these  were  nearly  all  rejected. 
Again  the  Act  went  to  the  upper  House,  and  that  body  accepted  the 
inevitable,  though  not  without  many  grimaces.  Rarely  have  such  denunci- 
ations been  hurled  at  any  great  leader  as  those  which  the  Conservative 
Lords  sent  after  Mr.  Gladstone  in  the  days  of  his  triumph.  The  Earl  of 
Winchilsea  characterized  the  prime  minister  as  another  Jack  Cade  come  to 
plague  the  English  people.  He  was  an  incipient  Cromwell,  who  had  his 
foot  on  Parliament  and  on  the  Constitution.  To  cap  the  climax,  the  earl 
said  that  he  himself  would  go  to  the  block,  but  never  surrender  to  such  a 
brieand  statesman.  A  final  conference  was  held  between  Lord  Granville, 
of  the  ministry,  and  Lord  Cairns,  of  the  opposition,  and  an  agreement  was 
reached  which,  if  it  did  not  satisfy  the  discomfited,  at  least  mollified  a  little 
their  wasted  pride.  The  suggestions  of  the  conference  w^ere  accepted  by 
the  House  of  Commons,  the  bill  \vas  completed,  and  on  the  26th  of  July, 
1869,  the  Act  for  the  Disestablishment  of  the  Irish  Church  received  her 
majesty's  assent,  and  became  the  law  of  the  realm.  Mr.  Gladstone,  leader 
of  the  great  event.  Prime  Minister  of  England,  was  sixty  years  and  five 
months  of  aoe. 

The  measure  thus  enacted  may  be  regarded  as  one  of  the  most  impor- 
tant in  the  legislative  history  of  modern  times.  Like  nearly  all  the  other 
great  acts  in  the  civil  history  of  mankind,  it  was  an  act  of  destruction. 
Strange  it  is  that  it  is  the  destructive  side  of  this  world's  legislation,  and  not 
its  ccTnstructive  side,  that  tends  to  make  men  great  and  free.  It  is  the  strik- 
ing off  of  the  manacle,  the  breaking  of  the  fetter,  the  tearing  away  of  the 
blindfold,  that  liberates  and  enlightens  the  human  race.  Such  an  act  was 
that  of  disestablishment.  So  far  as  human  agency  was  concerned,  the  chief 
honor  of  it  belongs  to  William  E.  Gladstone,  who  from  this  time  forth  w^as 
recognized  as  the  foremost  statesman  of  Great  Britain  in  the  current  age. 


THE    GREAT    LIBERAL    ASCENDENCY.  447 

CHAPTER  XXIII. 
The  Great  Liberal  Ascendency. 

HE  settlement  of  the  Church  question  seemed  to  suggest  and 
indeed  demand  another  measure  of  reform  of  kindred  charac- 
ter. Landownership  and  the  occupation  of  land  in  Ireland 
were  subject  to  abuses  as  intolerable  as  those  which  were 
struck  down  by  the  Act  of  Disestablishment.  Indeed,  the 
reform  begun  in  the  Church  had  not  been  called  as  a  single  or  complete 
measure  in  itself,  but  only  as  the  initial  part  of  a  general  reformation.  The 
Liberal  party  was  almost  as  much  bound  to  promote  a  land  reform  as  it 
was  to  carry  a  Church  reform  through  Parliament. 

Besides,  a  movement  was  in  full  force.  The  epoch  was  reformatory. 
The  Liberal  part)-  rose  to  its  ascendency  on  a  swell  whose  primary  billows 
were  in  the  great  national  sea.  The  party  must  go  forward.  It  is  in  the 
nature  of  things  that  they  who  lead  in  such  movements  can  only  lead  while 
they  continue  to  lead.  To  cease  is  to  be  overthrown.  The  other  force 
comes  just  behind,  and  a  popular  party  must  keep  w^ell  to  the  fore  or  perish 
altogether.  Mr.  Gladstone  was  not  at  all  disposed  to  shrink  from  his 
responsibility  or  to  blink  the  necessity  of  the  age.  No  sooner  had  the  par- 
liamentary session  of  1870  begun — even  wdiile  the  address  from  the  throne 
was  still  under  discussion — than  the  prime  minister  declared  it  to  be  the 
purpose  of  the  government  to  take  into  consideration  the  condition  of  Ire- 
land. Such  a  duty  he  said  was  paramount  to  others.  The  outrages  w^hich 
had  sprung  from  Fenianism,  and  in  general  the  disturbed  and  distressed 
state  of  the  Irish  nation,  would  all,  as  he  believed,  pass  away  if  Parliament 
should  go  boldly  to  the  task  before  it  and  destroy  the  evils  that  were  prey- 
ing on  the  sister  island  by  reforming  the  laws  of  land  tenure  and  cultiva- 
tion in  that  country. 

It  was  under  these  conditions  that  the  orreat  Irish  Land  Bill  w^as,  on 
the  15th  of  February,  1870,  introduced  into  the  House  of  Commons.  As 
usual  on  such  occasions,  when  I\Ir.  Gladstone  was  to  appear  In  the  role  of 
leader,  the  House  was  crowded  with  members,  and  the  galleries  thronged 
with  visitors  and  strangers.  Mr.  Gladstone  in  presenting  the  bill  referred 
to  a  dogma  of  the  opposition  which  they  had  been  previously  much  dis-. 
posed  to  advance,  namely,  that  the  land  question  in  Ireland,  and  not  the 
Church  question,  was  the  real  origin  of  grievances.  For  this  reason  in  intro- 
ducing the  Land  Bill  he  thought  he  might  claim  the  consideration  of  the 
opposition  and  the  sympathy  of  that  party  relative  to  the  importance  of  the 
measure  and  its  justice  to  all  concerned. 

Mr.  Gladstone  said  that  Parliament  and  nation  were  now  in  the  midst 


448  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

of  a  dispute,  or,  rather,  they  were  drawn  in  opposite  directions  by  two  forces, 
and  one  or  the  other  must  prevail.  The  controversy  must  be  ended.  For 
his  part  he  thought  that  it  ought  to  be  ended  by  the  concession  and  agree- 
ment of  the  fair-minded  and  the  moderate  of  all  opinions.  The  first  great 
act  in  reform  had  already  been  accomplished  by  Parliament,  and  the  next 
act  was  now  to  be  announced. 

Great  misapprehension  prevailed,  continued  the  prime  minister,  with 
regard  to  conditions  in  Ireland.  Some  claimed  with  much  uncharity  that 
the  Irish,  being  a  Celtic  race,  were  prone  to  insurrection  and  disorders. 
Many  were  abused  with  the  notion  that  land  tenure  and  land  occupation 
and  the  laws  of  landed  property  were  the  same  in  Ireland  as  in  England. 
Therefore  such  persons  were  of  opinion  that  like  results  of  contentment  and 
prosperity  ought  to  be  seen  on  both  sides  of  the  Irish  Sea.  Such  an  opinion 
was  wholly  erroneous.  In  Ireland  the  conditions  were  so  bad  that  in  the 
last  ten  years  wages  had  not  risen  by  a  farthing.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
number  of  those  appealing  to  charity  for  relief  of  their  wants  had  greatly 
increased  in  Ireland.  So  also  the  cost  of  living  had  increased.  To  these 
fundamental  griefs  had  been  added  violent  and  imprudent  interference  with 
the  usages  and  customs  of  the  people,  and  such  interference  could  not  be 
brooked  by  any  race. 

Going  back  further,  Mr.  Gladstone  said  that  for  fifty  years  at  least  the 
legislation  of  Great  Britain,  though  not  intended  to  work  harm,  had  been 
ever  detrimental  to  the  welfare  of  the  Irish.  It  seemed  that  every  act  had 
wrought  by  contraries.  When  in  1 793  the  right  of  suffrage  had  been  ex- 
tended to  Roman  Catholics,  freeholds  of  forty  shillings  had  been  created  : 
but  when  after  thirty-six  years  of  trial  the  franchise  was  abolished,  the  evil 
was  not  abolished,  but  was  aggravated.  Then  came  the  Encumbered 
Estates  Act,  and  this  led  to  the  Act  for  Dealing  with  the  Sale  of  Landed 
Estates.  In  these  laws  no  provision  had  been  made  to  protect  the  Irish 
tenants  in  what  ought  to  have  been  their  inalienable  rights  to  share  in  the 
improvements  which  they  made  on  the  landed  properties.  All  the  while  the 
principle  of  eviction  had  been  asserting  itself  and  getting  itself  recorded  in 
acts  more  and  more  stringent.  On  the  whole,  the  speaker  declared  that 
after  a  century  of  legislation  ostensibly  in  favor  of  Ireland  the  condition  of 
the  occupiers  of  land  in  that  country,  instead  of  being  better,, was  positively 
.not  better,  or  even  worse  than  at  the  beginning. 

The  American  reader  must  understand  that  the  conditions  of  land 
tenure  in  Ireland  at  this  time  had  become  so  complicated  as  to  require  a 
careful  study  before  they  could  be  realized.  Everything  had  grown  up 
locally.  Custom  had  been  piled  on  custom.  Irish  industrial  society  was  an 
agglomerate  combination,  the  parts  of  which  were  held  together  by  force, 
but  were  not  in  union.      Much  of  the  explication  of  the   Land   Bill   here  to 


THE    GREAT    LIBERAL    ASCENDENCY.  449 

follow  will  refer  to  usages  unknown  in  America,  and  will  puzzle  the  under- 
standing of  the  intelligent  reader. 

Mr.  Gladstone  himself  labored  with  the  almost  infinite  complications  of 
the  question  before  him.  He  said  in  the  first  place  that  the  fundamental 
evil  in  the  land  system  of  Ireland  was  insecurity  of  tenure.  This  fact  had 
been  pointed  out,  he  said,  long  ago  by  the  committee  known  as  the  Devon 
Commission.  Insecurity  of  tenure  was  a  paralysis  on  industry.  All  the 
relations  between  the  occupier  of  the  land  and  the  landowner  were  vitiated 
thereby.  The  occupier,  suffering  from  insecurity,  became  indifferent  to 
society  and  hostile  to  the  State.  Many  remedies  had  been  offered  for  this 
condition  of  affairs.  The  first  principle  which  the  premier  laid  down  was 
negative.  There  should  be  no  perpetuity  of  tenure.  This  signified  that  the 
system  of  tenancy  should  not  be  made  statutory  and  perpetual.  To  do  so 
would  be  to  make  the  landlords  the  recipients  of  unending  rentals.  This 
once  accomplished  they  would  no  longer  acknowledge  or  meet  their  respon- 
sibilities. That  effected,  there  would  be  an  end  of  duty,  with  great  harm  to 
the  public.  The  harm  would  show  itself  in  the  further  decline  of  the  agri- 
cultural interest  in  Ireland. 

The  speaker  went  on  to  show  that  the  existing  insecurity  of  tenure  was 
manifested  in  at  least  four  ways.  The  first  was  the  withdrawal  by  the  land- 
lords of  privileges  hitherto  enjoyed  by  the  tenant  ;  the  next  was  in  the 
prerogative  which  the  landlords  held  of  issuing,  without  regard  to  equity 
or  humanity,  notices  to  quit  occupation  ;  the  third  was  the  power  of  evic- 
tion ;  and  the  fourth  was  the  privilege  which  the  landlords  exercised  of  rais- 
ing the  rents. 

One  of  the  great  abuses — a  most  remarkable  exhibition  of  the  wrongs 
that  may  arise  in  the  administration  of  the  strong  over  the  weak — was  that 
when  the  Irish  estates  were  improved  by  the  tenants  and  were  thus  made 
more  valuable  by  their  exertions,  the  landlords  discovered  in  that  fact  the 
excuse  for  raising  the  rents  !  The  more  the  tenant  improved  his  holding 
the  higher  were  made  his  rent  charges.  If  he  refused  to  improve  his  hold- 
ing, and  starved,  then  his  rental  was  small ;  but  if  he  was  enterprising,  and 
improved  his  holding,  then  the  landlord-  would  say,  "  This  holding  is  worth 
more,  and  you  must  pay  more  for  it."  Thus  all  stimulus  to  improvement 
was  taken  away.  To  improve  was  simply  to  increase  the  value  of  the  land- 
lord's property.  The  improving  tenant  was  as  poor  as  his  neighbor  who 
did  not  improve. 

We  should  here  refer  to  the  varying  conditions  in  tenancy  in  different 
parts  of  the  island.  In  Ulster  there  was  a  custom  peculiar  to  that  county 
far  more  liberal  and  just  than  might  be  found  in  any  other.  It  was  noticed 
too  that  in  Ulster  the  industrial  condition  was  greatly  superior  to  that  in 
any  other  part  of  Ireland.  Mr.  Gladstone  showed  in  his  argument  that 
29 


450  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

wherever  security  of  tenure  prevailed  there  the  industrial  results  were  better. 
He  showed  that  between  the  years  1779  and  1869,  a  period  of  ninety  years, 
the  rents  in  England  and  Ireland  had  increased  six  hundred  percent.  In  all 
Ireland  it  had  only  increased  one  hundred  percent,  but  in  Ulster  it  had 
increased  two  hundred  per  cent.  There  was  thus  a  constant  relation  between 
security  of  tenure  and  the  amount  of  rentals  derived,  implying  also  a  corre- 
sponding increase  in  the  agricultural  productiveness  of  all  rented  landhold- 
ings  where  the  better  system  prevailed. 

The  prime  minister  then  entered  into  the  consideration  of  the  bills 
which  he  had  brought  to  the  House.  The  provisions  of  the  same  were  pre- 
sented under  two  heads  :  first,  the  acquisition  ;  and,  secondly,  the  occupation 
of  land.  Under  the  first  head  he  had  two  bills  to  introduce  respecting  land 
tenure  in  Ireland,  one  of  which  was  to  facilitate  the  transfer  and  distribution 
of  lands  in  that  country.  He  wished  to  enlarge  the  powers  of  limited  owners 
in  the  matter  of  selling  or  leasing  lands,  and  to  furnish  assistance  by  means 
of  loans  out  of  the  treasury  to  tenants  who  would  purchase  the  lands  which 
they  occupied.  The  assistance  was  not  to  extend  to  purchases  of  other  than 
the  occupied  holdings  of  the  tenants.  There  was  also  a  provision  to  lend 
to  those  who  would  reclaim  and  purchase  waste  lands,  and  also  to  assist 
landlords  in  compensating  tenants  who  wished  to  surrender  their  holdings. 

In  the  next  place,  Mr.  Gladstone  explained  the  changes  in  the  judiciary 
which  were  made  necessary  under  the  new  system.  There  should  be  a  court 
of  arbitration  from  which  appeals  might  be  made  to  the  judges  of  assize. 
The  Courts  in  deciding  causes  should  pass  on  all  the  circumstances  and 
equities  before  them,  as  well  as  upon  the  legal  aspects  of  the  cause.  The 
speaker  explained  that  the  Irish  holdings  might  be  grouped  in  four  classes, 
namely,  such  as  were  under  what  was  called  the  Ulster  custom  ;  secondly, 
those  in  other  counties  that  were  under  analogous  customs;  thirdly,  yearly 
tenancies  not  under  the  protection  of  any  custom;  and,  fourthly,  tenancies 
under  lease. 

As  to  the  first  class  of  holdings — those  of  the  Ulster  custom — these, 
under  the  provisions  of  the  bill,  should  be  made  legal.  The  other  customs 
of  like  kind  should  also  be  legalized,  but  with  certain  restrictions,  namely, 
that  the  tenant  when  disturbed  by  his  landlord  might  claim,  but  not  other- 
wise ;  that  he  should  not  claim  if  evicted  for  nonpayment  of  rent,  or  in 
cases  where  he  sublet  his  holding  ;  that  the  landlord  might  plead  in  bar  of 
complaint  arrears  of  rents  and  damages;  and  that,  finally,  the  custom  might 
be  limited  with  a  lease  for  thirty-one  years.  As  to  yearly  tenancies  the  bill 
provided  for  a  scale  of  damages  which  might  be  allowed  in  the  case  of  com- 
plaints under  this  head.  A  provision  was  made  for  extending  the  rights 
of  tenants-at-will  in  holdino^s  of  certain  values  for  a  certain  length  of  time 
and  for  certain  rentals. 


THE    GREAT    LIBERAL    ASCENDENCY.  45 1 

In  trying  causes  under  this  scale  the  judges  should  consider  injuries 
done  to  tenants  by  eviction,  and  should  regard  such  improvements  as  they 
had  made  on  their  holding.  Mr.  Gladstone  defined  improvements  to  be  any 
addition  suitable  to  the  nature  of  the  holding  made  by  the  tenant  thereto. 
He  said  that  it  was  the  purpose  of  the  bill  to  reverse  the  existing  presump- 
tion of  the  law.  That  presumption  was  that  the  improvements  on  land- 
holdings  were  the  property  of  the  landlords.  Henceforth  the  presumption 
should  be  that  such  improvements  were  the  properties  of  the  tenants.  As 
to  existing  improvements  the  law  should  reach  back  and  take  in  all  such  as 
had  been  produced  within  the  last  twenty  years.  This  principle  should  not 
extend,  however,  to  the  reclamation  of  waste  lands  or  permanent  buildings 
on  any  kind  of  land.  If  a  lease  existed  with  positive  provision  on  this  sub- 
ject, then  the  lease  should  be  regarded.  In  allowing  to  the  tenant  a  prop- 
erty in  the'  improvements  the  judge  trying  a  cause  should  consider  how 
long  the  tenant  had  enjoyed  the  said  improvement,  and  also  whether  he  had 
fulfilled  his  engagements. 

In  the  last  place,  in  the  case  of  holdings  under  lease  the  owner  might 
exempt  his  lands  from  the  custom  and  from  the  scale  of  damages  by  con- 
ceding to  his  tenants  a  term  lease  of  thirty-one  years.  There  were  minor 
provisions  also  touching  this  and  that  condition  in  the  landholding  system 
of  Ireland.  The  question  of  eviction  for  failure  to  pay  rent  should  not  be 
regarded  as  a  legal  wrong  unless  the  demand  were  excessive  and  unjust. 
The  equities  in  such  a  case  should  be  considered  by  the  court.  After  the 
passage  of  the  act  a  notice  from  landlord  to  tenant  to  quit  his  holding 
must  have  a  year  to  run,  and  the  notice  must  bear  an  excise  stamp  of  half 
a  crown. 

Such  were  the  general  provisions  of  the  Irish  Land  Bill  of  1870.  Mr. 
Gladstone  told  the  House  most  truly  that  the  government  had  worked  hard 
in  the  preparation  of  the  measure.  Neither  did  he  believe  that  the  scheme 
was  above  improvement.  He  did  not  doubt  that  it  contained  imperfections. 
The  subject  to  which  it  applied  was  so  complicated  that  human  wisdom  was 
hardly  sufficient  for  it.  The  government  in  the  present  case,  having  acted 
in  good  faith,  were  desirous  of  having  the  liberal  cooperation  of  all  parties. 
He  thought  that  the  proposed  measure  would  prove  a  blessing  to  the  Irish 
people.  He  hoped  that  the  grievances  and  sufferings  of  that  country  would 
thereby  be  in  large  measure  extinguished.  He  disclaimed  having  acted  in 
the  spirit  of  party.  He  had  aimed  to  prepare  a  bill  which  should  give 
security  of  tenure  to  the  occupiers  of  land.  He  had  also  aimed  to  gain 
for  the  landlord  improved  security  in  the  matter  of  his  rent  and  the  better 
cultivation  of  his  estates.  As  to  the  Irish  laborer  himself,  he  believed 
that  his  labor  would  be  in  greater  demand  than  ever  before,  that  a  great 
stimulus   would    be    imparted    to   industry,   with   a   consequent    increase    in 


452  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

comfort  and  happiness.  He  was  ready  to  concede  that  the  landlords  might 
suffer  a  temporary  loss,  but  he  did  not  believe  that  the  loss  would  be  ulti- 
mate.    In  the  end  the  landlord  also  would  be  the  gainer. 

Best  of  all,  Ireland  herself  would  arise  from  her  humiliation.  That 
country  was  rich  in  the  elements  of  national  wealth.  Development  was  all 
that  was  needed.  He  hoped  that  the  proposed  measure  would  be  accepted 
on  the  score  of  its  justice  by  landlord  and  tenant  alike.  If  the  speaker 
should  be  asked  what  he  hoped  to  accomplish  by  the  bill  he  would  answer 
that  he  hoped  to  effect  a  great  change  in  Ireland.  He  would  answer  also 
with  an  expression  of  his  confidence  that  the  change  in  question  would  be 
accomplished  by  gentle  means.  "  Every  line  of  the  measure,"  said  he,  "  has 
been  studied  with  the  keenest  desire  that  it  shall  import  as  little  as  possi- 
ble of  shock  or  violent  alteration  into  any  single  arrangement  now  existing 
between  landlord  and  tenant  in  Ireland.  There  is,  no  doubt,  much  to  be 
undone  ;  there  is,  no  doubt,  much  to  be  improved  ;  but  what  we  desire  is 
that  the  work  of  this  bill  should  be  like  the  work  of  Nature  herself  when  on 
the  face  of  a  desolated  land  she  restores  what  has  been  laid  waste  by  the 
wild  and  savage  hand  of  man.  Its  operations,  we  believe,  will  be  quiet  and 
gradual.  We  wish  to  alarm  none  ;  we  wish  to  injure  no  one.  What  we  wish 
is  that  where  there  has  been  despondency  there  shall  be  hope  ;  where  there 
has  been  mistrust  there  shall  be  confidence  ;  where  there  has  been  aliena- 
tion and  hate  there  shall,  however  gradually,  be  woven  the  ties  of  a  strong 
attachment  between  man  and  man.  This  we  know  cannot  be  done  in  a 
day.  The  measure  has  reference  to  evils  which  have  been  long  at  work  ; 
their  roots  strike  far  back  into  bygone  centuries,  and  it  is  against  the  ordi- 
nance of  Providence,  as  it  is  against  the  interest  of  man,  that  immediate 
reparation  should  in  such  cases  be  possible  ;  for  one  of  the  main  restraints 
of  misdoing  would  be  removed  if  the  consequences  of  misdoing  could  in  a 
moment  receive  a  remedy. 

"  For  such  reparation  and  such  effects  it  is  that  we  look  from  this  bill, 
and  we  reckon  on  them  not  less  surely  and  not  less  confidently  because  we 
know  they  must  be  gradual  and  slow  ;  and  because  we  are  likewise  aware 
that  if  it  be  poisoned  by  the  malignant  agency  of  angry  or  of  bitter  passions 
it  cannot  do  its  proper  work.  In  order  that  there  may  be  a  hope  of  its  en- 
tire success  it  must  be  passed,  not  as  a  triumph  of  party  over  party,  or 
class  over  class,  not  as  the  lifting  up  of  an  ensign  to  record  the  downfall  of 
that  which  has  once  been  great  and  powerful,  but  as  a  common  work  of 
common  love  and  orood  will  to  the  common  orood  of  our  common  countrv. 
With  such  objects  and  in  such  a  spirit  as  that  this  House  will  address  itself 
to  the  work  and  sustain  the  feeble  efforts  of  the  government.  And  my 
hope,  at  least,  is  high  and  ardent  that  we  shall  live  to  see  our  work  prosper 
in   our   hand,  and   that   in    Ireland   which  we   desire  to   unite  to    Enoland 


THE    GREAT    LIBERAL    ASCENDENCY.  453 

and  Scotland  by  the  only  enduring  ties — those  of  free  will  and  free  affec- 
tion— peace,  order,  and  a  settled  and  cheerful  industry  will  diffuse  their 
blessings  from  year  to  year  and  from  day  to  day  over  a  smiling  land  !  " 

The  general  judgment  was  highly  favorable  to  the  measure  which  Mr. 
Gladstone  thus  so  ably  and  eloquently  propounded.  Current  comment 
was  in  its  favor.  The  approval  of  the  House  was  manifested  in  no  uncer- 
tain accents.  It  is  probable  that  no  other  piece  of  legislation  in  modern 
times  has  met  so  complicated  and  almost  inexplicable  a  condition  of  society 
as  that  to  which  the  Irish  Land  Bill  was  directed.  It  may  be  singled  out 
as  the  most  difficult  legislative  act  of  modern  times.  The  skill  displayed  in 
its  preparation  was  as  great  as  its  complexity.  Certainly  a  long  debate  en- 
sued, beginning  on  the  7th  of  March  and  continuing  at  intervals  until  the 
measure  was  finally  accepted  in  July  following.  The  first  speaker  who 
criticised  the  bill  was  Dr.  Ball,  who  held  that  it  was  not  proper  to  use  the 
Ulster  custom  of  tenantry  as  the  legal  basis  of  a  great  parliamentary  act, 
for  the  reason  that  the  Ulster  custom  varied  with  different  estates,  and  was 
wanting  in  equity  and  abstract  correctness  of  principle.  For  this  reason  he 
opposed  the  bill,  and  thought  it  as  bad  a  measure  as  could  well  be  brought 
to  the  attention  of  the  House. 

As  for  Sir  Roundell  Palmer,  that  quasi-Liberal  statesman  thought  the 
Irish  Bill  a  humiliating  necessity  of  the  age;  but  he  was  unable  to  discover 
that  it  was  of  a  revolutionary  character.  The  leader  of  the  opposition  fol- 
lowed in  a  stirring  speech,  indicating  that  he  was  more  anxious  to  rout  cer- 
tain inconsistent  adherents  of  the  government  than  to  prevail  against  the 
bill.  In  this  way  he  attacked  Mr.  Horsman,  who  it  must  be  allowed  was 
sufficiently  vulnerable.  Mr.  Disraeli  satirically  referred  to  the  gentleman 
as  a  superior  person  upon  whose  conduct  no  uncharitable  construction 
ought  to  be  put.  Mr.  Horsman  had  been  secretary  to  the  Lord  Lieutenant 
of  Ireland,  but  while  in  that  office,  which  ought  to  have  made  him  well 
informed  with  respect  to  the  condition  of  the  Irish  people,  he  had  not  dis- 
covered a  single  grievance  or  said  a  word  about  abuses.  No  doubt  this  was 
a  part  of  some  profound  policy  which  the  gentleman  (Mr.  Horsman)  ex- 
pected subsequently  to  spring  on  the  House  and  the  nation  for  the  regen- 
eration of  Ireland  and  the  consolidation  of  the  United  Kingdom  ! 

As  to  the  Land  Bill  now  pending  Mr.  Disraeli  contented  himself  with 
defining  it  as  the  most  complicated,  clumsy,  and  heterogeneous  measure  ever 
obtruded  on  the  attention  of  Parliament !  Nor  will  the  reader  fail  to  note 
the  adroitness  as  well  as  the  injustice  of  such  a  charge.  The  phrase  "  com- 
plicated," as  defining  the  Land  Bill,  was  correct ;  but  was  not  the  condition 
to  which  it  applied  still  more  complicated  .'^  It  was  also  "  heterogeneous," 
for  the  facts  were  heterogeneous.  The  facts  were  heaped  up  like  the  broken 
masses  of  Irish  society,  mountains  high,  and   one   could   hardly  expect   that 


454  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    OLADSTONE. 

they  should  be  made  homogeneous  by  a  single  stroke  of  law.  To  say  that 
Mr.  Gladstone's  measure  was  "clumsy "was  hardly  justifiable,  unless  we 
should  call  a  huge  engine  clumsy,  even  when  effectively  performing  its  revo- 
lutions and  offices.  But  Mr.  Disraeli's  denunciation  sufficed  to  interest  the 
House,  though  it  convinced  not  even  himself  In  concluding  he  appealed 
more  seriously  to  the  Commons  to  decide  the  great  subjects  at  issue  in  a 
manner  becoming  to  them  as  members  of  the  British  Parliament. 

Mr.  Gladstone  in  his  concluding  speech  said  :  "  It  is  our  desire  to  be 
just  ;  but  to  be  just  we  must  be  just  to  all.  The  oppression  of  a  majority 
is  detestable  and  odious — the  oppression  of  a  minority  is  only  by  one  de- 
eree  less  detestable  and  less  odious.  The  face  of  justice  is  like  the  face  of 
the  god  Janus.  It  is  like  the  face  of  those  lions,  the  work  of  Landseer, 
which  keep  watch  and  ward  around  the  record  of  our  country's  greatness. 
She  presents  the  tranquil  and  majestic  countenance  toward  every  point  of 
the  compass  and  every  quarter  of  the  globe.  That  rare,  that  noble,  that 
imperial  virtue  has  this  above  all  other  qualities,  that  she  is  no  respecter  of 
persons,  and  she  will  not  take  advantage  of  a  favorable  moment  to  oppress 
the  wealthy  for  the  sake  of  flattering  the  poor  any  more  than  she  will  con- 
descend to  oppress  the  poor  for  the  sake  of  pampering  the  luxuries  of  the 
rich." 

The  fate  of  the  bill  was  already  certain.  That  it  would  be  accepted  by 
both  Houses  of  Parliament  could  not  be  doubted.  The  Liberal  supremacy 
was  now  so  firmly  established,  the  solidarity  of  the  party  so  completely 
effected,  that  it  could  work  its  will.  The  Liberals,  marvelous  to  relate,  and 
not  the  Tories,  as  Lord  Macaulay  had  thought  in  1839,  ^^^'^  found  a  leader 
whom  they  were  willing  to  lollow  "  riotously,  almost  mutinously."  The 
division  of  the  House  for  the  second  reading  of  the  bill  was  forced  by  only 
a  few  irreconcilables  of  the  opposition.  Nearly  all  of  that  following  went 
out  into  the  Liberal  lobby,  so  that  four  hundred  and  forty-two  votes  were 
counted  for  the  second  reading  against  only  eleven  votes  in  the  negative. 
Mr.  Disraeli  himself  was  counted  with  the  majority. 

At  the  next  stage  the  House  went  into  committee  of  the  whole  for 
consideration  of  the  bill ;  but  before  this  Mr.  Fortescue  had  secured  in  a 
hurried  manner  the  passage  of  an  act  for  the  better  protection  of  life  and 
property  in  Ireland.  In  the  County  Mayo  sundry  outrages  had  been  com- 
mitted of  late  that  made  the  adoption  of  such  a  measure  imperative. 
Meanwhile  everybody's  neighbor  had  come  forward  with  an  amendment  to 
the  Land  Bill,  insomuch  that  there  were  no  fewer  than  three  hnndred amend- 
ments pending.  Few  of  these  had  any  significance.  Nearly  all  were  dis- 
posed of  with  a  simple  negative.  Some  were  merely  rejected  by  the  prime 
minister  ;  some  were  withdrawn.  Mr.  Disraeli  offered  one  that  might  have 
fallen  under  his  own  definition  of  complicated,  clumsy,  and  heterogeneous. 


THE    GREAT    LIBERAL    ASCENDENCY.  455 

It  was  that  in  the  matter  of  compensation  for  eviction  the  same  should  be 
limited  with  this  clause  :  "In  respect  of  unexhausted  improvements  made 
by  him  [meaning- the  tenant],  or  any  predecessor  in  title,  and  of  interruption 
in  the  completion  of  any  course  of  husbandry  suited  to  the  holding." 

This  amendment,  however,  was  opposed  by  the  premier,  who  said  that 
it  was  an  undisguised  attempt  to  destroy  a  cardinal  principle  of  the  bill. 
So  at  last,  on  the  30th  of  May,  1870,  the  bill  in  its  entirety  was  passed  by 
the  House  of  Commons.  It  was  sent  to  the  Lords  and  by  them  sub- 
mitted to  a  debate  for  three  sittings,  and  was  then  approved  without  a  divi- 
sion. Next  came  the  final  committee,  and  the  Irish  Land  Bill  was  adopted 
by  a  large  majority  and  with  the  concurrence  of  both  Houses.  It  received 
the  royal  assent  on  the  ist  of  August  and  passed  into  history  as  one  of  the 
greatest  acts  of  modern  legislation. 

The  reformatory  tendency  was  not  yet  satisfied.  The  question  of 
national  education  next  demanded  the  consideration  of  Parliament.  The 
educational  system  of  Great  Britain  had  grown  up  like  all  of  her  other 
institutions,  in  a  desultory  manner,  out  of  suggestions  of  locality  and  the 
incidental  desires  of  the  people.  There  was  indeed  no  system  of  education. 
Observe  that  we  speak  of  a  period  as  late  as  1870.  Meanwhile  the  United 
States  of  America  had  gone  forward  with  the  invention  and  perfection  of  a 
system  of  free  public  education  the  most  admirable  that  had  ever  yet  been 
produced  by  man.  Great  Britain  was  behind.  Her  educational  condition 
was  a  crying  abuse.  It  devolved  upon  Mr.  William  E.  Forster,  vice  presi- 
dent of  the  council,  to  lead  in  the  production  of  a  new  system  more  in 
accord  with  modern  times  and  more  honorable  to  the  intelligence  and 
philanthropy  of  the  British  nation.  Already  the  way  had  been  blazed  with 
the  sharp  hatchet  of  Charles  Dickens,  whose  gash  and  lash  had  cut  his 
countrymen  to  the  quick. 

Strange  it  was  at  this  juncture  that  the  Nonconformists  and  Dissent- 
ers of  Great  Britain  should  set  themselves  against  so  manifest  a  benefit 
as  that  involved  in  a  general  reform  of  education.  These  held  that  there 
was  no  right  of  support  to  schools  by  the  State  ;  but,  more  properly,  they 
objected  to  any  national  system  of  education  into  which  the  teaching  of 
religion  was  to  be  injected.  They  were  willing  to  go  as  far  as  mere  secular 
instruction,  but  they  held,  properly  enough,  that  the  teaching  of  religion 
is  a  function  of  the  clerical  and  parental  relations. 

In  Great  Britain  the  'opinion  had  long  and  firmly  prevailed  that  the 
religious  manner  and  element  in  education  could  not  be  extracted  without 
the  ruin  of  the  whole.  There  was  a  large  party  in  England,  just  as  there 
has  been  a  large  party  in  the  United  States,  who,  while  objecting  stren- 
uously to  dogmatic  and  denominational  teaching  in  the  schools,  were  still 
favorable  to  the  reading  of  the  Scriptures  and  to  certain  primary  exposition 


456 


LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 


of  religion  by  the  teachers.  In  the  confusion  of  opinions  there  was  danger 
that  Mr.  Forster's  effort  to  institute  an  educational  reform  might  come  to 
naught.  He  went  ahead,  however,  with  the  preparation  of  what  was  called 
the  Elementary  Education  Bill.  In  presenting  the  same  to  the  House  of 
Commons  he  was  met  with  a  considerable  defection  in  the  Liberal  ranks  ; 


DICKENS,  1861. 


for  many  of  these  were  Dissenters  or  Nonconformists,  and  were  jealous, 
from  their  religious  prejudices,  of  the  proposed  system  of  public  education. 
There  was,  however,  a  consensus  that  something  must  be  done  in  the 
way  of  a  reform.  In  the  country  districts  the  schools  had  been  mostly  under 
the  management  of  the  Church.  In  such  institutions  the  secular  teaching 
amounted  to  little,  and  the  pupils  issuing  from  the  schools  were  virtually 
ignorant  of  those  branches  upon  which  sensible  people  mostly  rely  as  on 
the  bottom  elements  of  education.     In  the  cities,  particularly  in  the  great 


THE    GREAT    LIBERAL    ASCENDENCY 


457 


manufacturing-  cities,  there  was  hardly  a  pretense  of  giving  primary  instruc- 
tion to  children.  In  the  city  of  Leeds  only  nineteen  thousand  of  the  fifty- 
eight  thousand  enumerated  attended  school  at  all  ;  in  Manchester,  twenty- 
five  thousand  out  of  sixty  thousand  ;  in  Liverpool,  thirty  thousand  out  of 
ninety  thousand  ;  in  Birmingham,  twenty-six  thousand  out  of  eighty-three 
thousand.  These  great  cities  had  got  their  free  trade  ;  they  had  crot  their 
manufacturing  establishments  galore ;  they  had  got  their  wealth  ;  they 
had  got  a  franchise  that  amounted  almost  to  manhood  suffrage  ;  but  in  the 
way  of  public  schools  they  had  got  nothing  except  a  miserable,  semiecclesi- 
astical,  local,  and  voluntary  inheritance  from  the  past. 

There  was  at  this  time  no  general  system  in  any  part  of  Great  Britain 
under  which  primary  instruction  could  be  authoritatively  given  to  the  chil- 
dren of  the  people.  In  connection  with  almost  every  Church  and  chapel 
there  was  some  kind  of  a  day  school.  There  were  local  schools  for  small 
children,  none  of  which  were  adequately  supported.  There  were  Sunday 
schools  everywhere.  But  in  all  these,  as  a  general  fact,  the  religious  intent 
was  dominant  over  the  secular  interest  of  the  schools.  There  were  educa- 
tional institutions  of  intermediate  and  primary  grade,  to  which  large  grants 
of  money  had  been  made  ;  but  such  grants  \vere  nearly  always  accompanied 
with  prejudicial  conditions  imposed  on  them  by  the  donors. 

Over  and  above  all  this  was  the  question  of  the  indifference  of  parents 
to  the  interests  of  their  children  in  matters  of  education.  This  indifference 
was  general  throughout  Great  Britain.  If  provision  should  be  made  for  the 
education  of  the  people  they  would  not  avail  themselves  of  it.  About  two 
thirds  of  the  children  of  the  United  Kingdom  were  out  of  school.  In  Lon- 
don the  mass  of  non-school-going  children  made  an  appalling  and  pitiable 
army,  subject  to  all  the  vices  with  which  they  might  be  inoculated,  and 
capable  of  nothing  but  the  lower  activities  of  life.  The  thoroughfares  and 
byways  of  London,  and  even  the  gutters,  were  alive  with  its  army  of  neg- 
lected, untaught  childhood.  Beggary  and  stealing  were  the  natural  trades 
to  which  these  hundreds  of  thousands  of  children  were  consigned  by  society. 
The  condition  had  become  one  of  national  shame  and  of  international 
reproach.  Youthful  criminals  multiplied  until  there  went  a  saying  that  "the 
prisoner's  head  does  not  reach  above  the  dock." 

Mr.  Forster's  Education  Bill  was  directed  as  a  remedy  to  this  mon- 
strous and  intolerable  condition.  It  provided  for  a  general  system  of  pri- 
mary education,  and  put  parents  under  compulsion  to  avail  themselves 
thereof  The  law  was  to  be  that  children  must  be  sent  to  school — that 
parents  could  not  without  committing  a  misdemeanor  refuse  to  comply  with 
the  law.  As  to  the  homeless  and  destitute,  the  bill  provided  for  them  not 
only  educational  privileges,  but  supplies  of  food  and  clothing  also. 

All  this  grew  out  of  the  agitation  which  had  been  started  by  philan- 


458  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM     E.    GLADSTON?:. 

thropists  and  by  the  report  of  a  commission  sent  out  in  1865-66.  The  com- 
mission reported  that  a  milHon  and  a  half  of  the  British  youth  were  in  a 
state  of  destitution.  These  were  employed  mostly  in  manufacturing  estab- 
lishments. Already  there  had  been  passed  a  Factories  Act  ;  but  that 
measure  had  to  be  amended  with  other  regulations  more  stringent.  As  the 
investigation  into  the  condition  of  the  poor  proceeded  a  state  of  affairs  was 
unearthed  which  for  the  distress  and  suffering  which  it  entailed  and  the 
cruelty  it  manifested  has  hardly  been  paralleled  in  any  civilized  country. 

We  need  not  here  trace  all  of  the  intermediate  stages  which  led  up  to  the 
rational  endeavor  of  1870.  Mr.  Forster's  bill  was  received  with  interest  and 
profound  concern.  He  explained  to  the  House  that  it  was  the  purpose  of 
the  proposed  legislation  to  provide  an  efficient  school  in  every  district  in 
England  where  the  same  was  demanded.  The  school  districts  should  be 
constituted  a  sort  of  civil  parishes.  If  any  district  should  of  its  own  accord 
provide  a  proper  amount  of  primary  secular  education  for  its  children,  then 
the  voluntary  schools  of  such  district  should  not  be  disturbed,  so  long  as  the 
provision  was  sufficient.  Schools  should  be  placed  under  the  patronage  of 
the  government,  and  should  be  of  a  given  standard  of  efficiency.  There 
should  be  a  compulsory  inspection  on  the  secular  plan,  and  no  "conscience 
clause"  should  be  permitted  in  connection  with  any  grant,  whether  the  same 
were  made  for  buildings  or  for  tuition.  School  boards  should  be  chosen 
throughout  England  and  Wales  to  have  immediate  charge  of  the  schools 
and  responsibility  for  them.  Such  boards  might  enact  by-laws,  and  should 
compel  the  attendance  of  the  children  of  the  given  district  for  a  certain 
length  of  time  in  each  year,  as  to  all  within  the  limits  of  five  years  and 
twelve  years  of  age. 

These  provisions  of  the  bill  aw^akened  much  opposition.  Everything 
is  opposed  in  England  that  is  proposed — particularly  if  it  be  a  reform.  The 
American  reader  must  be  astonished  at  the  reactionary  spirit  of  the  nation 
and  the  race.  Some  speakers  opposed  the  compulsory  clause  of  the  Edu- 
cation Bill.  Others  thought  that  the  conscience  clause  should  not  be 
included.  The  progressives  were  in  favor  of  a  system  of  secular  education 
pure  and  simple.  A  large  party  criticised  the  way  in  which  the  school  funds 
were  to  be  provided.  This,  like  all  other  methods  in  British  progress,  was 
a  compound  process.  School  fees  should  be  charged,  taxes  should  be  as- 
sessed, and  government  grants  should  make  up  the  rest.  The  schools  in 
the  poorest  districts  were  to  be  free  schools  absolutely.  Those  in  the  richer 
districts  were  to  be  supported  largely  by  fees.  Nothing  was  complete  and 
rational.  Nevertheless  the  measure  was  fitted  to  the  existing  condition  in 
British  society,  and  Mr.  Forster  had  the  honor  of  carrying  his  measure  suc- 
cessfully through  Parliament,  but  not  without  great  unpopularity  as  the 
result  to  himself. 


THE    GREAT    LIBERAL    ASCENDENCY. 


459 


On  the  motion  for  the  third  reading  of  the  bill  Mr.  Miall,  the  mouth- 
piece of  the  Nonconformists,  and  therefore  in  the  Liberal  ranks,  denounced 
the  Education  Bill,  and  assailed  the  government  for  having  brouo-ht  forward 
a  measure  of  confusion  into  the  Liberal  ranks,  with  the  necessity  of  appealino- 
to  the  opposition  for  support.  The  speaker  continued  with  the  charo-e  that 
Mr.  Gladstone  had  already  conducted  one  division  of  the  Liberal  party 
through  the  Valley  of  Humiliation.  For  his  own  part,  he  added  as  his 
motto,  "Once  bit,  twice  shy.''  Mr.  Miall  concluded  by  saying  that  for  him- 
self and  those  who  agreed  with  him  they  could  not  stand  that  sort  of  thincr 
much  longer. 

This  speech  was  well  calculated  to  rouse — as  it  did  rouse— Mr.  Glad- 
stone to  an  unusually  sharp  retort.  "  I  hope,"  said  he,  "that  my  honorable 
friend  [meaning  Mr.  Miall]  will  not  continue  his  support  of  the  government 
one  moment  longer  than  he  deems  it  consistent  with  his  sense  of  duty  and 
right.  For  God's  sake,  sir,  let  him  withdraw  it  the  moment  he  thinks  it 
better  for  the  cause  he  has  at  heart  that  he  should  do  so.  So  long  as  my 
honorable  friend  thinks  fit  we  will  cooperate  with  my  honorable  friend  for 
every  purpose  we  have  in  common  ;  but  when  we  think  his  opinions  and 
demands  exacting,  when  we  think  he  looks  too  much  to  the  section  of  the 
community  he  adorns,  and  too  little  to  the  interest  of  the  people  at  large, 
we  must  then  recollect  that  we  are  the  government  of  the  queen,  and  that 
those  who  have  assumed  the  high  responsibility  of  administering  the  affairs 
of  this  empire  must  endeavor  to  forget  the  parts  in  the  whole,  and  must,  in 
the  great  measures  they  introduce  into  the  House,  propose  to  themselves 
no  meaner  or  narrower  object — no  other  object  than  the  welfare  of  the  em- 
pire at  large." 

The  Elementary  Education  Act  was  second  only  in  importance  to  the 
Irish  Land  Bill.  Indeed,  the  two  measures  can  hardly  be  compared  the 
one  with  the  other,  since  they  applied  to  facts  so  unlike  in  character.  The 
one  measure  had  reference  to  the  distresses  which  had  arisen  from  the 
vicious  system  of  landholding  in  Ireland;  the  other  concerned  the  welfare 
of  nearly  all  the  children  of  England  and  Wales.  Both  were  of  the  utmost 
importance  to  Great  Britain  as  a  State  and  nation.  The  two  measures 
were  the  great  acts  of  the  session  of  1870.  They  were  of  themselves  suffi- 
cient to  justify  the  claims  of  the  Liberal  party  to  the  applause  and  gratitude 
of  the  English  people,  and  in  particular  to  justify  the  historical  claims  of 
Mr.  Gladstone  to  be  regarded  as  one  of  the  foremost  statesmen  of  the 
century. 

The  year  at  which  we  have  now  arrived  brought  with  it  on  the  Continent 
the  tremendous  cataclysm  of  the  Franco-Prussian  War.  That  struggle,  brief 
in  duration,  dreadful  in  its  results,  though  salutary  in  its  remoter  conse- 
quences, broke  out  at  the  close  of  summer  and  receded  across  the  blood- 


460  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OK    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

Stained  horizon  about  the  end  of  the  year.  For  France  the  outbreak  was 
fraught  with  the  most  serious  consequences.  The  Second  Empire  was 
crushed  into  nonentity  under  the  German  guns,  pouring  their  vomit  into 
the  crater  of  Sedan.  The  French  emperor  seems  to  have  been  mistaken  in 
all  his  calculations  relating  to  the  war  which  he  so  rashly  undertook. 

At  the  outbreak,  or  rather  before  the  outbreak,  of  hostilities,  there  was 
published  in  the  London  Times  the  draught  of  a  treaty  which  it  was  said 
the  Count  Bismarck  for  Germany  and  M.  Benedetti  for  France,  had  agreed 
to  at  Berlin.  The  suspicious  eye  of  Great  Britain  discovered  in  the  agree- 
ment a  provision  which  seemed  to  her  to  signify  the  annexation  of  Belgium 
to  France!  It  was  believed  subsequently  that  Bismarck  in  the  negotiations 
had  held  out  this  bait  to  his  enemy  for  the  express  purpose  of  awaking  the 
alarm  and  jealousy  of  England,  and  thus  bringing  her  to  a  friendship  and 
possible  alliance  with  Germany. 

At  any  rate,  the  publication  referred  to  created  great  excitement  in 
England,  and  the  opposition  began  at  once  to  propound  questions  to  the 
government.  jNIr.  Gladstone  in  answer  admitted  his  surprise  and  that  of 
the  government  at  the  terms  of  the  treaty.  He  said  that  the  gravity  of  the 
situation  had  not  been  overestimated.  He  chose,  however,  to  await  declara- 
tions from  the  French  and  the  Prussian  ofovernments  before  indicatinof  a 
policy  for  Great  Britain.  When  the  declarations  came  the  anxiety  was 
somewhat  allayed  ;  for  France  denied  the  authenticity  of  the  document 
which  assumed  to  represent  the  action  of  her  minister.  Subsequently  it 
was  shown  that  such  a  treaty  had  been  prepared,  but  that  the  movement  had 
ended  in  abortion. 

In  the  interim  the  prime  minister  asked  that  Parliament  should  order 
the  addition  of  twenty  thousand  men  to  the  army,  and  vote  two  millions  of 
pounds  for  the  contingency.  Speaking  for  the  government,  Mr.  Gladstone 
said  that  Great  Britain  would  put  herself  in  the  attitude  of  armed  neutrality 
and  of  unequivocal  friendliness  to  both  the  parties  at  war.  This  course 
was  not  regarded  as  satisfactory  by  the  opposition,  who  claimed  that  it  was 
not  sufficiently  high-toned  for  England. 

Mr,  Gladstone  was  not  at  his  best  in  such  situations.  He  disliked 
war,  and  at  bottom  Great  Britain  has  always  been  a  warlike  nation.  Mr. 
Disraeli  pressed  the  prime  minister  with  certain  interrogatories  that  were 
not  well  answered.  Mr.  Gladstone  passed  over  the  Belgium  complication 
without  indicating  the  intentions  of  the  government.  He  spoke  in  general 
terms,  and  very  moderately,  to  the  effect  that  England  had  adequate  forces 
and  that  the  government  would  uphold  its  dignity  and  maintain  a  friendly 
attitude  toward  the  combatants.  He  did  not  deem  it  necessary  to  forerun 
the  situation  with  the  idea  of  making  safety  doubly  safe  by  introducing  the 
very  elements  of  danger  and  disturbance  which  ought  to  be  avoided.      He 


THE    GREAT    LIBERAL    ASCENDENCY.  46 1 

said  that  the  government  held  itself  in  readiness  and  was  hopeful  of  an 
opportunity,  either  by  itself  or  in  cooperation  with  others,  to  brino-  about  a 
cessation  of  hostilities  and  become  the  herald  of  peace  between  the  warring 
nations.  A  like  tone  marked  the  discussions  on  the  government  side  in  the 
House  of  Lords.  Presently  a  new  treaty  was  concluded  by  England, 
Prussia,  and  France,  on  the  basis  of  the  integrity  and  neutrality  of  Belgium 
- — a  measure  in  accordance  with  an  agreement  made  by  the  same  powers 
more  than  thirty  years  previously.  In  general  this  Liberal  policy  was  in- 
dorsed by  the  nation  ;  but  it  was  unsatisfactory  to  many,  especially  to  those 
who  were  not  educated  to  admit  that  anything  good  could  proceed  from 
the  policy  of  the  Liberal  party. 

Meanwhile  a  serious  complication  had  'arisen  between  England  and 
Greece.  In  April  of  1870  a  party  of  English  travelers,  consisting  of  Lord 
and  Lady  Muncaster,  Mr.  F.  G.  Vyner,  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Edward  Lloyd  and 
their  child  ;  Edward  Herbert,  secretary  to  the  British  Legation  at  Athens  ; 
and  Count  Albert  de  Boyl,  secretary  to  the  Italian  Legation  at  the  same 
place,  with  certain  servants,  were  attacked  by  a  band  of  Greek  brigands,  a 
short  distance  from  Marathon,  were  captured,  roughly  used,  and  held  as 
hostages  for  a  reward.  It  chanced  that  at  the  same  time  the  Greek 
authorities  held  certain  of  the  brigands  as  prisoners,  pending  their  trial  for 
crime.  The  captors  of  the  party  referred  to  opened  negotiations  with 
the  Greek  government,  demanding  fifty  thousand  pounds  and  a  free  pardon 
for  themselves  and  their  fellows  in  custody  as  the  price  of  liberating  the 
captives. 

The  friends  of  the  latter  were  active.  The  triumphant  brigands  held 
their  ground.  They  took  their  captives  into  the  interior  and  concealed 
them.  They  set  the  ladies  at  liberty  and  reduced  their  demands  to  twenty- 
five  thousand  pounds  as  a  pledge  of  immunity.  This  the  government  would 
perhaps  have  conceded,  as  there  was  great  anxiety  to  save  the  lives  of  the 
unfortunate  captives  ;  but  the  clause  about  the  liberation  of  the  outlawed 
prisoners  was  not  conceded,  and  the  brigands,  perceiving  that  they  were  not 
to  be  paid,  carried  out  their  threats  by  shooting  their  prisoners. 

This  crime  produced  the  greatest  indignation.  Though  the  Greek 
government  could  hardly  be  regarded  as  blameworthy  it  was  clear  that 
reparation  would  have  to  be  made  speedily  by  somebody  for  the  bloody  out- 
rage. The  matter  came  up  in  Parliament,  and  the  situation  was  acknowl- 
edged to  be  grave.  Meanwhile  the  Greek  government  went  ahead  to 
punish  as  best  it  might  the  perpetrators  of  the  shocking  crime.  Nearly  all 
of  the  brigands  were  hunted  down,  caught,  and  executed.  Their  fellows 
already  in  prison  did  not  escape.  The  rigor  of  the  government  was  not 
relaxed  until  the  crime  had  been  as  adequately  avenged  as  possible.  For 
the  rest  there  was  no  remedy,  even  if  half  the  Greeks  had  been  destroyed. 


462 


LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    \VILLIAM    E.  GLADSTONE. 


CAPTURE  OF   BRITISH  TOURISTS   BY  GREEK    BRIGANDS. 


THE    GREAT    LIBERAL    ASCENDENCY.  463 

Gradually  the  excitement  abated,  and  the  incident  passed  into  history  as  a 
bloody  incident  of  the  year. 

Two  or  three  other  Acts  of  some  importance  completed  the  legislation 
of  1870.  One  of  these  was  an  order  in  council  providing  that  after  the 
31st  of  August  in  that  year  all  appointments  made  to  places  under  the 
civil  departments  of  the  State,  except  in  the  foreign  office,  and  in  such 
posts  as  recpiired  professional  knowledge,  should  be  made  by  competitive 
examinations  of  the  candidates  therefor.  It  was  the  beginning  of  civil 
service  reform  in  England.  At  the  same  time  the  appointment  of  the  general 
in  chief  of  the  army,  which  had  hitherto  been  a  prerogative  of  the  crown, 
was  transferred  to  the  minister  of  war — a  significant  circumstance  in  the  tend- 
encies of  tlie  times.  It  showed  that  even  the  appointment  of  the  highest 
military  officer  in  the  realm  should  rest  henceforth  on  the  consent  of  the 
people  ;  for  the  minister  of  war,  on  his  own  appointment  to  office,  must  under 
the  British  Constitution  submit  himself  to  his  constituents  for  reelection 

At  nearly  the  same  time  Parliament,  already  perceiving  the  predica- 
ment into  which  Great  Britain  had  been  drawn  during  the  American  civil 
war  by  permitting  her  shipyards  to  be  used,  almost  with  connivance,  for  the 
fitting  out  of  Confederate  cruisers  to  prey  on  the  commerce  of  the  United 
States,  began  to  hedge  against  the  like  mistake  in  the  future  by  passing 
what  was  called  a  Foreign  Enlistment  Act,  authorizing  the  orovernment  to 
prevent  hereafter  either  the  building  or  the  escape  from  British  shipyards 
of  such  vessels  as  the  Alabama.  Another  Act  was  that  disfranchising  four 
additional  rotten  boroughs.  Still  another  resolution  removed  certain  disa- 
bilities which  had  hitherto  rested  on  clergymen  who  should  choose  to  aban- 
don their  profession  for  some  other.  Another  Act  established  halfpenny 
postage  for  newspapers  and  a  halfpenny  postal  card  for  open  communica- 
tions by  mail. 

Finally,  the  intention  of  the  government  was  announced  to  order  the 
release  of  the  Fenian  prisoners  at  that  time  confined  in  the  jails  of  Dublin. 
It  fell  to  Mr.  Gladstone's  lot  as  prime  minister  to  carry  out  this  measure. 
The  plan  was  that  the  prisoners  should  be  liberated  without  penalty  further 
than  their  parole  to  leave  forever  the  United  Kingdom.  Mr.  Gladstone  in 
a  letter  to  the  Lord  Mayor  of  Dublin  said,  referring  to  the  liberation  of  the 
Fenian  prisoners:  "It  is  this  last  question  which  has  formed  the  subject  of 
careful  examination  by  her  majesty's  government,  and  they  have  been  able 
to  come  to  the  conclusion  that,  under  the  existing  circumstances  of  the 
country,  the  release  of  the  prisoners,  guarded  by  the  condition  which  I  have 
stated,  will  be  perfectly  compatible  with  the  param.ount  interests  of  public 
safety,  and,  being  so,  will  tend  to  strengthen  the  cause  of  peace  ahd  loyalty 
in  Ireland."  Thus  closed  in  honor  and  effectiveness  the  orreat  legislative 
enactments  of  1870. 


464  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 


CHAPTER  XXIV. 
Decline  of  the  Reformatory  Movement. 
FTER  this  period  the  heroic  character  of  the  Liberal  ascend- 
ency (1868-74)  seemed  to  wane.  The  legislative  work  of  the 
session  of  1871  was  less  robust  and  honorable.  The  govern- 
ment, as  it  were,  walked  unsteadily  among  the  complications 
of  that  year.  This  was  due  in  part  to  the  nature  of  the  com- 
plications, and  in  part  to  a  gradual  reaction  that  was  coming  on  in  the 
country  against  that  policy  which  w^as  defined  as  liberal  by  its  adherents, 
and  as  radical  and  revolutionary  by  its  opponents. 

In  the  first  place,  a  difficult  question  arose  about  the  treaty  of  1856. 
Or  rather,  it  was  the  old  question  over  again  ;  that  is,  it  was  that  immitiga- 
ble Eastern  Question  which  had  drao-ored  its  trail  throuq-h  the  entire  extent 
of  the  nineteenth  century.  The  particular  part  of  the  treaty  of  Paris 
which  now  again  obtruded  itself  on  England  and  all  Europe  was  the  clause 
relating  to  the  neutralization  of  the  Black  Sea.  It  had  been  agreed  in  the 
compact  of  1856  that  that  water  should  be  neutralized.  To  this  Russia  had 
been  obliged  to  assent;  but  she  only  abided  her  time  till  her  assent  might 
be  withdrawn. 

That  time  came  in  the  European  crisis  of  1870-71.  France  at  that 
juncture  was  in  no  condition  to  insist  upon  the  neutralization  of  the  Black 
Sea,  or  upon  any  other  international  fiction.  Prussia  was  in  a  condition  to 
insist,  but  did  not  care  to  do  so,  having  an  underground  preference  for 
Russia  in  that  matter.  Austria,  instead  of  caring  to  insist,  positively 
desired  that  there  should  be  no  insistence,  but  rather  consent  that  Russia 
might  do  as  she  would.  Turkey  could  not  insist ;  for  she  was  not  able. 
England  was  in  a  mood  to  insist,  but  could  not  well  insist  by  herself ;  and 
that  was  her  dilemma  ;  and  it  was  the  dilemma  of  the  Liberal  government 
also. 

Russia,  seeing  her  opportunity,  sent  a  polite  note  to  all  the  powers 
w^ho  were  concerned  to  know  her  intentions  that  she  declined  to  recognize 
any  longer  the  neutralization  of  the  Black  Sea.;  that  she  withdrew  from 
the  naval  agreements  involved  in  the  previously  existing  compact ;  and  that 
she  by  her  voluntary  act  restored  to  the  sultan  his  full  rights  which  had 
been  hampered  under  the  conditions  of  the  treaty  of  Paris.  Alexander 
said  that  it  was  not  his  purpose  to  revive  the  Eastern  Question,  and  that 
as  to  the  treaty  of  1856  he  desired  to  adhere  thereto,  except  as  to  such 
parts  of  it  as  related  to  the  neutralization  of  the  Black  Sea.  That  and  no 
more  he  would  abrogate. 

Great  Britain  for  her  part  wished  to  support  the  treaty  of  Paris  intact 


DECLINE    OF    THE    REFORMATORY    MOVEMENT. 


465 


in  all  of  its  provisions.  She  therefore  solicited  and  obtained  the  holdino- 
of  a  conference  of  the  powers  in  London.  Contrary  to  her  wishes,  how- 
ever, the  conference  agreed  that  the  existing  compact  about  the  neutraliza- 
tion of  the  Black  Sea  should  be  abrogated.  This  seemed  to  force  Great 
Britain  from  her  chosen  ground,  but  she  was  obliged  to  accept  the  situa- 
tion.    The  government  was  thus  subjected  to  the  taunts  of  the  opposition. 


ALEXANDER    II,    EMPEROR   OF    RUSSIA, 

Mr.  Disraeli  entered  the  arena  and  handled  the  ministry  roughly.  He  said 
that  Great  Britain  had  long  ago  given  a  guarantee  to  Prussia  of  her 
Saxon  provinces,  and  now,  when  the  question  was  again  opened,  Great 
Britain  for  that  guarantee  had  gained  nothing.  There  should  also  have 
been  an  advantage  as  compensatory  with  the  recent  pledge  given  by 
Prussia  that  no  prince  of  Hohenzollern  would  be  a  candidate  for  the  vacant 
30 


466  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM     E.    (JLADSTONE. 

throne  of  Spain.  Mr.  Disraeli  went  on  to  say  that  the  so-called  armed  neu- 
trality of  Great  Britain  had  become  so  attenuated  as  to  be  a  scandal.  He 
said  that  the  recent  conference  in  London  had  succeeded  simply  in  making 
a  record  of  the  humiliation  of  England,  adding  that  the  condition  of  the 
country  was  critical  and  perilous. 

In  answer  to  this  Mr.  Gladstone  entered  a  general  denial.  He  said  that 
the  ministry  could  have  had  no  idea  of  what  was  coming  when  the  Russian 
note  broke  upon  them.  As  to  the  present  military  condition  of  the  king- 
dom, he  compared  that  with  what  it  had  been  ten  years  previously.  In 
1 86 1  ^Ir.  Disraeli  had  denounced  the  government  for  upholding  a  bloated 
armament.  Now  he  denounced  the  government  for  supporting  an  atte7iu- 
rt'Av/ armament.  But  the  attenuated  armament  of  1871  was  about  twice  as 
strong  as  the  bloated  armament  of  1861!  Moreover,  it  had  never  been 
supposed  in  the  inner  circle  of  diplomacy  that  the  neutralization  of  the 
Black  Sea  was  a  permanent  part  of  European  policy.  Lord  Clarendon  had 
not  thought  so.  Lord  Palmerston  had  not  believed  that  the  compact  would 
endure.  Should  Great  Britain  now  attempt  to  enforce  the  provision  of  the 
treaty  of  1856  relative>to  the  Black  Sea  she  would  not  have  the  support  of 
a  single  neutral  power  in  Europe.  True,  the  neutralization  of  the  Black 
Sea  was  a  vital  provision,  but  the  remainder  of  the  treaty  was  vital,  even  if 
the  less  vital  part  should  be  abrogated. 

Mr.  Disraeli,  retorting,  showed  that  the  prime  minister  had  been  mis- 
taken in  regard  to  Lord  Clarendon's  position  relative  to  the  neutralization, 
and  this  correction  Mr.  Gladstone  was  obliged  to  accept ;  but  he  still  held 
that  Lord  Palmerston  did  not  believe  or  insist  that  the  neutralization  of  the 
Black  Sea  would  be  perpetual.  The  contingency  that  had  come  was  his- 
torical, and  was  unforeseen.  No  government  in  Great  Britain  could  have 
provided  against  it.  A  great  war  had  just  swept  Europe,  and  new  condi- 
tions had  arisen.  The  government  ventured  to  believe  that  the  true  policy 
was  to  sustain  the  remaining  neutral  influences  in  Europe,  and  thus,  as  he 
hoped,  come  into  the  office  of  mediator  and  peacemaker  for  the  disturbed 
nations. 

The  debates  on  this  question  ran  on  to  a  considerable  extent.  Mr. 
Herbert  introduced  a  resolution  to  the  effect  that  the  House  was  of  opinion 
that  it  was  the  duty  of  her  majesty's  government  to  act  in  concert  with  the 
neutral  powers  in  an  effort  to  obtain  moderate  terms  of  peace  in  the  settle- 
ment between  Prussia  and  France,  and  to  withhold  acquiescence  in  case  the 
Prussian  terms  were  such  as  to  impair  the  independence  of  her  beaten 
antagonist.  To  this  Mr.  Gladstone  answered  that  it  was  the  policy  of  the 
government  to  use  all  proper  influence  to  the  end  that  the  victor  in  the 
recent  war  should  exact  no  more  than  reasonable  and  honorable  conditions 
of  peace.     Both   France   and    Prussia  were  unwilling  to   accept   proffered 


DECLINE    OF    'JIIE    REFORMATORY    MOVEMENT.  467 

intervention.  The  prime  minister  thought  that  under  the  circumstances  it 
would  be  prejudicial  for  Great  Britain  to  press  her  intermediary  offices.  He 
declared  that  the  government  was  not  unmindful  of  the  progress  of  affairs 
in  Europe  or  unconcerned  about  the  conditions  of  peace.  Hereupon  Mr. 
Herbert  withdrew  his  resolution  and  the  matter  ended,  but  not  without 
opportunity  to  the  opposition  to  make  capital  out  of  the  embarrassments 
which  history,  rather  than  weakness,  had  brought  upon  the  government. 

The  next  question  of  importance  arising  in  Parliament  was  that  of  pur- 
chase in  the  army.  A  bill  was  introduced  called  the  Army  Regulation  Bill. 
The  measure  was  brought  forward  by  Mr.  Cardwell,  the  war  minister. 
He  proposed  that  there  should  be  a  reorganization  of  the  army,  and  that 
the  system  of  purchasing  commissions  should  be  abolished.  Mr.  Cardwell 
explained  that  the  theory  of  the  new  policy  was  that  military  duty  should  be 
paid  for,  and  should  not  be  compulsory.  Hitherto  commissions  in  the  army 
had  been  purchased.  There  was  a  stated  scale  of  prices  for  the  various 
grades  of  official  rank  ;  but  the  actual  prices  had  risen,  for  there  was  com- 
petition among  the  bidders.  A  condition  of  affairs  had  supervened  which 
was  a  disgrace  to  Christendom. 

Mr.  Cardwell's  measure  provided  for  the  appointment  of  an  army  com- 
mission, which  should  take  the  place  of  the  intending  purchasers  with 
respect  to  all  officers  who  wished  to  sell  their  commissions  and  retire  on 
half  pay.  All  such  should  be  relieved  from  duty  and  should  be  bought  out 
from  the  Consolidated  Fund.  New  commissions  should  henceforth  be 
issued,  not  by  purchase,  but  by  public  competitive  examinations.  To  these 
examinations  subalterns  in  good  standing  should  be  admitted  from  any 
regiment  that  had  rendered  two  years'  acceptable  service.  The  measure 
proposed  was  virtually  a  revolution  in  the  military  organization  and  admin- 
istration of  Great  Britain. 

Of  course  so  great  a  reform  would  meet  with  strenuous  opposition. 
Mr.  Cardwell  had  strong  support  from  the  Liberal  ranks,  but  his  party  was 
not  steady  in  defense  of  the  new  policy.  The  bill  was  opposed  by  Colonel 
Loyd-Lindsay  and  by  Sir  J.  Pakington,  who  denounced  it  as  a  costly 
party  project  and  a  sop  to  democracy.  The  measure  was  supported  by 
Mr.  Trevelyan  with  historical  argument  and  statistical  citations.  He  brought 
to  the  attention  of  the  House  the  case  of  Sir  Henry  Havelock,  of  great 
fame,  who  waited,  sick  at  heart,  for  years  for  the  promotion  to  which  he  was 
entitled.  Sir  Henry  had  himself  declared  that  tlij-ee  sots  and  two  fools  had 
purchased  over  him,  and  that  if  he  had  had  no  family  to  support  he  would 
not  have  served  another  hour.  Mr.  Trevelyan  also  challenged  the  opposi- 
tion to  go  before  the  country  on  the  question  of  the  pending  measure,  say- 
ing that  "Abolition  of  Purchase"  would  make  a  popular  war  cry  for  those 
who  favored  it. 


468  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM     E.    GLADSTONE. 

The  cautious  Disraeli,  perceiving  the  merits  of  the  reform,  held  back 
those  who  attacked  it.  He  prudently  stood  out  of  the  wind  and  suggested 
that  the  measure  might  be  perfected  in  committee  of  the  whole.  Mr. 
Gladstone  strongly  advocated  the  adoption  of  the  measure  and  insisted 
that  the  amendment  proposed  by  Colonel  Loyd-Lindsay  should  be  voted 
down,  which  Was  accordingly  done. 

W  hen  the  House  went  into  committee  the  debate  was  continued  with 
great  spirit.  Some  thought  that  there  was  to  be  a  great  increase  in  army 
expenditure,  and  that  this  should  not  be  incurred.  Mr,  Pease  contended 
that  it  would  be  immoral  for  Great  Britain  to  set  the  example  to  Europe  of 
increasing  her  military  expenditures.  Mr.  Gladstone  showed  that  a  reduc- 
tion in  expenditures  was  at  this  time  impossible.  He  also  showed  that  the 
expenditure  for  the  current  year  would  not  be  as  great  as  that  of  the  last. 
He  declared  that  the  government  were  favorable  to  retrenchment,  and  that 
they  were  determined  to  carry  the  principle  of  economy  into  every  depart- 
ment of  the  service. 

In  continuing  the  debates  Mr.  Disraeli  said  that  he  approved  of  the 
abolition  of  purchase  only  because  he  thought  that  measure  a  means  to  the 
great  end  of  a  reorganization  of  the  army.  That  was  the  primary  object, 
and  it  seemed  that  that  object  would  be  abandoned  by  the  government. 
Mr.  Gladstone  said  in  answer  that  the  abolition  of  purchase  was  \\\^  first 
essential  of  the  new  measure,  and  that  reorcranization  would  follow.  Under 
this  representation  the  bill  passed  the  House  and  was  sent  to  the  House  of 
Lords.  There  it  encountered  the  usual  opposition.  The  Lords  concealed 
their  intent  by  saying  that  they  did  not  feel  at  liberty  to  vote  for  the  aboli- 
tion of  purchase  in  the  army  until  the  whole  plan  of  the  government  should 
be  made  known.  The  result  of  the  discussion  was  that  the  bill  was  rejected 
by  the  Lords  by  a  majority  of  twenty-five  votes.  For  the  nonce  it  appeared 
that  Mr.  Cardwell's  project  was  to  be  defeated. 

At  this  juncture,  however,  Mr.  Gladstone  discovered  a  method  by  which 
the  measure  miorht  be  carried  through  and  the  House  of  Lords  left  in  the 
air.  He  noted  in  the  examination  of  antecedent  conditions  that  the  right 
of  purchase  had  been  created,  not  by  an  Act  of  Parliament,  but  by  a  royal 
warrant  issued  to  that  effect.  What,  therefore,  if  the  royal  warrant  should 
be  canceled.?  Who  could  purchase  a  commission  when  there  was  no  law 
for  doing  it  and  no  royal  warrant  for  doing  it? 

On  the  20th  of  July,  1871,  while  the  question  was  still  before  an  em- 
barrassed House,  the  prime  minister,  having  been  interrogated  on  some 
point  by  Sir  George  Grey,  announced  to  the  astonished  body  that  the  gov- 
ernment had  determined  to  advise  the  queen  to  cancel  the  royal  warrant 
by  which  army  purchases  had  been  legalized.  This  advice  was  accepted  by 
her  majesty,  and  not  only  this,  but  a  new  royal  warrant  had  been  prepared 


DECLINE    OF    THE    REFORMATORY    MOVEMENT.  469 

the  terms  of  which  were  identical  with  those  of  the  recent  bill  passed  by  the 
House  of  Commons  !  Never  was  there  a  more  adroit  proceeding  or  one 
niore  successful  in  the  issue  ;  but  it  raised  an  outcry  that  was  heard  to  the 
corners  of  the  kingdom.  The  prime  minister  announced  that  in  accordance 
with  the  new  warrant  purchases  of  commissions  in  the  army  would  cease 
forever  after  the  first  of  November  proximo.  As  to  the'  House  of  Lords, 
he  did  not  presume  to  say  what  course  that  honorable  body  should  pursue  ! 
He  added  that  it  was  the  purpose  of  the  government  to  secure  an  honor- 
able and  equitable  measure  by  which  the  troublesome  matters  involved 
might  be  finally  settled.  He  should  use  all  the  means  in  his  power  to  ob- 
tain from  Parliament  full  justice  and  equity  for  the  officers  of  her  majesty's 
army. 

Mr.  Disraeli  at  this  juncture  flamed  up  and  denounced  the  course  taken 
by  the  government  as  high-handed  and  outrageous.  He  went  on  to  say 
that  the  thing  done  was  a  part  of  an  avowed  and  shameful  conspiracy 
against  the  undoubted  privileges  of  the  other  House  of  Parliament.  This 
was  carrying  the  matter  too  far,  and  the  speaker  called  Mr.  Disraeli  to  order 
for  his  unparliamentary  language.  The  leader  of  the  opposition  withdrew 
the  offensive  expression,  but  contended  that  the  action  of  the  British  min- 
ister in  appealing  to  the  prerogative  of  the  crown  in  order  to  help  himself 
out  of  the  difficulties  with  which  he  was  embarrassed  was  unwise  and  un- 
patriotic. 

In  the  House  of  Lords  the  course  taken  by  Mr.  Gladstone  produced 
the  hottest  antagonism.  The  Duke  of  Richmond  offered  a  resolution : 
"  That  this  House  in  assentinor  to  the  second  reading  of  this  bill  desires  to 
express  its  opinion  that  the  interposition  of  the  executive  during  the  prog- 
ress of  a  measure  submitted  to  Parliament  by  her  majesty's  government, 
in  order  to  attain  by  the  exercise  of  the  prerogative,  and  without  the  aid  of 
Parliament,  the  principal  object  included  in  that  measure,  is  calculated  to 
depreciate  and  neutralize  the  independent  action  of  the  Legislature,  and  is 
strongly  to  be  condemned  ;  and  this  House  assents  to  the  second  reading 
of  this  bill  only  in  order  to  secure  the  officers  of  her  majesty's  army  com- 
pensation to  which  they  are  entitled,  consequent  on  the  abolition  of  pur- 
chase in  the  army." 

In  the  same  vein  were  sundry  speeches  from  noblemen  of  high  rank. 
Among  these  were  the  Marquis  of  Salisbury,  who  went  so  far  as  to  intimate 
that  Lord  Granville,  who  had  defended  the  government  bill  in  the  upper 
House,  was  merely  doing  the  bidding  of  his  master  (meaning  Mr.  Glad- 
stone). He  also  said  that  to  him  it  seemed  hardly  worth  while  for  the 
House  of  Lords  to  retain  their  place  and  rank  under  the  Constitution  of 
Great  Britain  when  they  were  compelled  to  act  under  their  responsibilities 
in  only  one  way,  and  that  against  their  convictions!     Some  of  the  Liberal 


4/0  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

Lords  went  over  to  the  opposition,  and  the  vote  of  censure  on  Mr.  Glad- 
stone was  passed  by  a  majority  of  eighty.  But  the  bill  went  forward  and 
was  adopted  without  a  division. 

On  the  return  of  the  measure  to  the  House  of  Commons  there  was  a 
sort  of  hiatus  that  had  rarely  occurred  in  British  legislation.  The  cancel- 
lation of  the  royal  warrant  had  already  accomplished  the  main  object  of  the 
bill,  namely,  the  abolition  of  purchase  in  the  army.  Mr.  Gladstone  openly 
avowed  that  he  had  advised  the  crown  to  use  the  warrant.  Whether  the 
action  was  to  be  regarded  as  done  by  a  statute  or  by  prerogative  he  did  not 
much  care  to  inquire.  Her  majesty  had  the  legal  pozuer  to  cancel  a  royal 
warrant,  and  there  was  a  sufficient  necessity  for  her  to  exercise  the  power. 
As  to  the  censure  which  the  Lords  had  passed  upon  him,  he  did  not  disre- 
gard the  same,  but  he  would  appeal  to  the  nation  against  the  Lords  and 
their  judgment. 

Thus  the  controversy  ended.  The  royal  warrant  was  fortified  by  the 
passage  of  the  bill,  and  the  reform  in  the  British  army  was  thus  effected. 
In  the  next  place  the  House  reached  the  discussion  of  the  Ballot  Bill.  We 
in  America  may  well  be  surprised  at  the  opposition  which  the  privilege  of 
voting  by  ballot  has  encountered  in  Great  Britain.  In  the  House  of  Lords 
the  measure  was  so  detested  that  even  Liberal  peers  stayed  away  from  the 
sittings  rather  than  discuss  so  revolutionary  a  measure  !  When  at  last  the 
bill,  by  sheer  stress  of  government  pressure,  was  carried  through  to  its 
second  reading,  it  was  found  that  the  measure  had  been  curtailed  of  many 
of  its  essential  parts,  and  that  only  ninety-seven  of  the  Lords  had  the  cour- 
age to  support  it  with  their  votes.  The  fact  is  that  there  never  was  a  meas- 
ure of  progress  and  reform  in  England  that  was  not  seriously  impeded  by 
the  upper  House  of  the  British  Parliament.  It  is  the  function,  in  truth,  of 
that  body  to  impede  and  obstruct  the  motion  of  mankind  as  much  as  pos- 
sible, to  retard  the  future  and  support  the  crumbling  throne  of  the  past. 

Another  measure  of  this  time  was  the  University  Tests  (Repeal)  Bill, 
which  was  now  finally  settled.  The  matter  had  been  agitated  the  year 
before  ;  but  a  measure  adopted  by  the  House  had  been  rejected  by  the 
Lords.  A  new  bill  repealing  the  university  tests  was  now  prepared  and 
adopted  by  the  Commons.  In  the  Lords  an  amendment  was  added  at  the 
dictation  of  the  ecclesiastical  bench,  which  was  equivalent  to  a  rejection  of 
the  whole.  But  the  amendment  was  in  its  turn  refused  by  the  Commons, 
and  the  House  of  Lords  was  obliged  to  yield.  The  effect  of  the  new  law 
was  that  all  lay  students  of  the  universities,  whatever  might  be  their  religion, 
might  hereafter  be  admitted  as  students  on  terms  of  equality  with  those 
who  were  adherents  of  the  English  Church. 

Meanwhile  two  or  three  incidents  of  parliamentary  history  occurred 
worth  mentioning  in  this  narrative.     Early  in  the  session  of  1871  a  propo- 


DECLINE    OF    THE    REFORMATORV    MOVEMENT.  471 

sition  was  made  of  a  grant  to  the  Princess  Louise,  on  the  occasion  of  her 
marriage.  Tlie  resohition  provided  for  a  grant  absokite  of  thirty  thousand 
pounds,  and  of  six  thousand  pounds  annuity  to  the  princess,  who  in  this 
case  was  to  be  married  to  a  subject  of  the  queen  not  of  princely  rank.  Such 
measures  were  customary  ;  but  the  temper  of  the  people  had  changed,  and 
opposition  showed  itself  openly  in  the  House  of  Commons. 

It  devolved  on  Mr.  Gladstone  to  defend  the  measure,  and  he  did  so  in 
a  well-considered  speech.  He  spoke  in  praise  of  the  queen,  and  referred  to 
the  motherly  character  of  her  majesty,  who  had  assented  to  the  marriage  of 
her  daughter  to  a  subject  on  the  score  of  the  affection  between  them.  He 
also  said  that  the  grant  was  moderate,  and  that  the  royal  household  was 
marked  in  its  management  for  strict  economy.  He  called  attention  to  the 
fact  that  the  civil  list  prepared  at  the  beginning  of  the  reign  had  not  con- 
templated provisions  such  as  that  now  about  to  be  made.  There  was  also, 
he  said,  a  high  ground  on  which  the  grant  ought  to  be  voted,  and  that  was 
the  propriety  of  supporting  in  a  dignified  manner  the  royal  household. 
Nothing  less  than  this  was  becoming  to  the  British  empire.  In  questions 
of  this  kind  affecting  the  dignity  and  even  the  preferences  of  the  queen  Mr. 
Disraeli,  whether  in  government  or  in  opposition,  might  always  be  depended 
on  to  favor  her  majesty's  honor,  and  possibly  even  her  majesty's  whim,  and 
he  did  so  on  the  pending  question. 

As  to  the  affairs  of  Ireland,  they  also  came  up  for  review  at  this  ses- 
sion. It  must  be  allowed  that  the  disestablishment  of  the  Church  in  that 
country  and  the  passage  of  the  Land  Bill,  though  both  measures  were  salu- 
tary and  produced  a  good  result,  did  not  wholly  appease  the  spirit  of  dis- 
content. In  a  country  situated  as  Ireland  has  been  during  the  present 
century  there  are  only  two  completely  successful  methods — that  is,  if  success 
is  to  be  measured  by  the  quietude  that  may  follow  a  given  course.  One 
method  is  absolute  suppression  and  the  other  is  absolute  justice  and  equality. 
Great  Britain  could  no  longer  secure  quietude  by  absolute  suppression,  but 
a  large  part  of  her  subjects  were  willing  to  have  her  do  so.  She  was  not 
then  willing — and  is  not  yet  willing — to  secure  quietude  by  absolute  justice 
and  equality.  She  is  still  engaged  in  "governing"  Ireland  in  a  sense  very 
different  from  her  methods  in  England  proper. 

At  the  time  of  which  we  speak,  though  there  was  a  tendency  toward 
justice  and  equality,  there  were  still  so  great  wrongs  and  so  much  injustice 
that  the  Irish  nation  was  perturbed,  unsettled,  discontented,  unhappy,  and 
capable  of  the  insurgent  spirit.  Crime,  though  it  had  subsided  in  Ireland, 
still  broke  out  in  outrages  here  and  there.  It  became  necessary  again  to 
investigate  the  condition  of  Irish  affairs,  and  Lord  Hartington  moved  the 
appointment  of  a  committee  to  that  end.  In  discussing  this  question  Mr. 
Disraeli  attacked   the  government  with  great  spirit.     Lord  Hartington  was 


472  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

Chief  Secretary  of  Ireland,  and  of  him  the  leader  of  the  opposition  said 
that  he  held  a  most  unenviable  official  relation.  He  continued  by  putting 
a  speech  into  the  chief  secretary's  mouth  to  this  effect  :  "  It  is  true  that 
murder  [in  Ireland]  is  perpetrated  with  impunity  ;  it  is  true  that  life  is  not 
secure  and  that  property  has  no  enjoyment  and  scarcely  any  existence  ;  but 
this  is  nothing  when  in  the  enjoyment  of  abstract  political  justice — and  by 
the  labors  of  two  years  we  have  achieved  that  for  Ireland  ;  massacres, 
incendiarism,  and  assassinations  are  things  scarcely  to  be  noticed  by  a  min- 
ister, and  are  rather  to  be  referred  to  the  inquiry  of  a  committee." 

The  speaker  continued  with  the  assertion  that  many  people  in  England 
seemed  to  think  that  the  prime  minister  was  the  owner  of  the  philosopher's 
stone  I  They  had  sent  him  to  the  House  with  an  immense  majority  with 
the  avowed  object  that  he  should  procure  tranquillity  for  the  Irish  nation. 
Then  he  added  that  under  Mr.  Gladstone's  influence  and  at  his  instance 
Parliament  had  legalized  confiscation,  consecrated  sacrilege,  and  condoned 
high  treason  ;  Parliament  had  destroyed  churches,  shaken  property  to  its 
foundation,  and  emptied  jails  under  the  direction  of  the  prime  minister  ; 
and  yet  he  could  not  govern  Ireland  without  appealing  to  a  parliamentary 
committee  !  He  said  that  the  right  honorable  gentleman  (meaning  Mr. 
Gladstone)  had,  after  many  heroic  exploits  and  with  the  support  of  an  over- 
whelming majority,  succeeded  in  making  the  government  of  Great  Britain 
ridiculous. 

In  answer  to  this  Mr.  Gladstone  declared  with  keen  irony  that  he  was 
glad  the  leader  of  the  opposition  had  been  in  so  great  measure  relieved  of 
his  last  year's  fears.  Then  he  had  declared  to  the  House  that  disestablish- 
ment would  be  followed  with  results  more  dreadful  than  a  foreign  conquest. 
Now  he  was  able  to  find  nothing  more  alarminor  than  leo^alized  confiscation 
and  consecrated  sacrilege  !  The  ministry  was  able  to  conduct  ministerial 
affairs  ;  but  the  committee  proposed  by  Lord  Hartington  was  necessary  to 
investigate  alleged  facts  and  unlawful  acts  said  to  exist  and  to  have  been 
done  in  Ireland.  He  called  attention  of  the  House  to  a  former  assertion 
of  Mr.  Disraeli,  who  had  once  said  that  in  three  counties  of  Ireland  life  and 
property  were  not  protected  because  the  government  was  too  weak.  Then 
Mr.  Gladstone  asked,  "  If  the  defenses  of  the  government  are  weak  and 
the  number  of  troops  insufficient,  is  a  government  to  make  it  an  apology 
for  departing  from  the  first  principles  of  duty  that  they  sit  upon  this  bench, 
that  they  want  to  sit  upon  this  bench,  and,  therefore,  cannot  propose  meas- 
ures which,  in  their  opinion,  principle  justifies  and  the  safety  of  the  country 
demands  ?  " 

The  debate  was  continued  by  Mr.  Bernal  Osborne,  who  contented  him- 
self with  wit  and  sarcasm.  He  said  that  the  cabinet  had  been  whitewashed 
and  transformed  and  moved  around,  but  had  finally  come  to  the  old  military 


i 


DECLINE    OF    THE    REFORMATORY    MOVEMENT.  473 

aspect  of  "  as  you  were  !  "  He  noticed  that  in  the  cabinet  the  friends  of 
Ireland  were  not  themselves  Irish.  When  he  went  through  the  list  of  min- 
isters, a  long  and  dreary  list  of  men  who  bowed  to  their  leader,  he  thought 
he  could  see  over  the  cabinet  door  this  inscription  :  "  No  Irish  need  apply  !" 
So  the  debate  wound  its  length  along  and  came  to  the  finality  of  a  vote, 
when  the  select  committee  was  appointed  by  the  voice  of  a  large  majority. 

Another  question  that  arose  at  this  session  was  that  of  woman 
suffrage.  A  resolution  was  introduced  to  extend  the  parliamentary  fran- 
chise to  single  women  who  were  householders.  This  motion  failed  by  a 
majority  of  sixty-nine  votes,  but  it  received  sufficient  support  to  warrant 
the  belief  that  under  favoring  auspices  it  might  ultimately  prevail.  The 
prime  minister  himself  said  that  in  case  the  Ballot  Bill  should  become  a 
law  he  thought  that  the  electoral  franchise  miorht  be  conceded  to  women 
without  detriment  to  the  interests  of  society  or  the  nation  at  large. 

It  was  in  this  year  that  matters  came  to  a  crisis  between  Great 
Britain  and  the  United  States.  Six  years  had  gone  by  since  the  conclusion 
of  our  civil  war,  and  the  Union  had  been  unequivocally  restored.  The 
government  of  the  United  States  continued  to  reaffirm  and  to  press  a 
claim  against  Great  Britain  for  the  injuries  which  she  had  permitted  to  be 
done  by  her  agency  to  American  commerce  and  the  Union  cause  during 
the  late  war.  This  claim  could  be  no  longer  put  aside.  The  time  had 
come  when  something  had  to  be  done.  Five  British  commissioners  were 
accordingly  appointed  and  sent  to  Washington  to  negotiate  a  treaty. 
They  were  Earl  Grey,  Sir  Stafford  Northcote,  Professor  Bernard,  Sir 
Edward  Thornton,  and  Sir  John  A.  Macdonald,  Premier  of  Canada.  The 
government  of  the  United  States  appointed  commissioners  also;  and  the 
two  bodies  of  representatives  constituted  a  High  Joint  Commission  to  pre- 
pare a  treaty. 

Several  minor  provisions  were  readily  agreed  to.  American  vessels 
should  be  admitted  to  the  St.  Lawrence  River  free,  and  to  the  Canadian 
canals  on  payment  of  the  customary  tolls.  As  to  the  San  Juan  boundary, 
that  question  should  be  arbitrated  by  Emperor  William  of  Germany.  No 
claims  should  be  admitted  against  the  United  States  for  the  Fenian  fiasco 
against  Canada.  As  to  the  great  question,  that  of  the  Alabama  claims,  the 
same  should  be  settled  on  the  assumption  that  responsibility  for  the  depre- 
dations done  on  American  commerce  should  be  recognized  where  crovern- 
ment  had  not  exercised  due  diligence  and  precautions  relative  to  the  fitting 
out  of  the  Confederate  cruisers.  This  was  the  great  point.  The  principle 
having  been  determined,  all  subordinate  questions  of  fact  and  damages  were 
to  be  submitted  to  a  board  of  arbitration  to  be  held  the  following  year. 
This  agreement,  which  was  completed,  after  thirty-seven  sittings,  at  New 
York  in  May  of  1871,  is  known  as  the  Treaty  of  Washington. 


474 


LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 


Such  were  the  general  measures  promoted  at  the  parliamentary  session 
of  that  year.  The  changes  which  had  been  agreed  to  relative  to  the 
organization  and  methods  of  the  army  introduced  confusion  into  the  calcu- 


SIR  JOHN  ALEXANDER  MACDONALO,  PREMIER  OF  CANADA. 

lations  of  Mr.  Lowe,  chancellor  of  the  exchequer.  In  order  to  make  up 
certain  deficiencies  he  proposed  a  tax  on  matches,  in  the  nature  of  a 
stamp  to  be  affixed  on  each  box.  The  measure  produced  great  popular 
discontent.      It    seems    that    Mr.   Lowe  had    not    well   considered  what  he 


DECLINE    UF    THE    REFORMATORY    MOVEMENT,  475 

recommended,  tor  the  match-box  stamp  proposed  was  found  to  be  worth  as 
much  or  more"  than  the  matches  which  it  covered  !  The  newspapers  at- 
tacked the  measure  with  great  vivacity,  and  the  chancellor  of  the  exchequer 
was  obliged  to  abandon  his  proposition.  Finally,  it  was  resolved  to  meet 
the  extraordinary  expenses  of  the  military  administration  by  a  slight  in- 
crease in  the  income  tax.  This  concluded  the  legislation  of  the  year,  and 
on  the  2 1st  of  August  Parliament  was  adjourned. 

William  E.  Gladstone  was  always  a  busy  man.  His  appearance  in  public 
was  almost  continuous.  His  avocations  of  business  were  only  remitted  to 
make  opportunity  for  his  intellectual  pursuits.  At  this  period  he  was  annoyed 
not  a  little  by  the  renewal  of  the  slander  that  he  was  in  heart  and  life,  if  not 
in  profession,  a  Romanist.  On  this  question  he  was  nagged  not  a  little,  and 
sometinies  defended  himself  in  a  memorable  manner.  At  this  juncture  a 
certain  member  of  Parliament,  Mr.  Whalley,  of  Petersborough,  wrote  to  the 
prime  minister,  saying  that  he  did  so  on  behalf  of  his  constituents,  Mr. 
\V' halley  told  him,  as  their  mouthpiece,  what  their  sentiment  was  about  the 
head  of  the  government,  on  the  supposition  that,  while  pretending  to  be  a 
pillar  in  the  Church  of  England,  he  was  in  secret  sympathy  with  Mother 
Rome. 

To  this  Mr.  Gladstone  replied  in  no  uncertain  tone.  He  said  to  Mr. 
Whalley  :  "  I  quite  agree  with  those  of  your  constituents  in  thinking  that 
the  question  '  whether  the  prime  minister  of  this  country  is  a  member  of 
the  Church  of  Rome,  and  being  such  not  only  declines  to  avow  it,  but  gives 
through  a  long  life  all  the  external  signs  of  belonging  to  a  different  com- 
munion,' is  a  'question  of  great  political  importance,'  and  this  not  only  '  in 
the  present,'  but  in  any  possible  condition  of  the  '  Liberal '  or  any  other 
'  party.'  For  it  involves  the  question  whether  he  is  the  basest  creature  in 
the  kingdom  which  he  has  a  share  in  ruling,  and  instant  ejectment  from  his 
office  would  be  the  smallest  of  the  punishments  he  would  deserve.  If  I 
have  said  this  much  upon  the  present  subject  it  has  been  out  of  personal 
respect  to  you  ;  for  I  am  entirely  convinced  that,  while  the  question  you 
have  put  to  me  is  in  truth  an  insulting  one,  you  have  put  it  only  from  having 
failed  to  notice  its  true  character,  since  I  have  observed  during  my  expe- 
rience of  many  years  that,  even  when  you  undertake  the  most  startling 
duties,  you  perform  them  in  the  gentlest  and  most  considerate  manner  !  " 
It  is  probable  that  Mr,  Gladstone's  power  of  sarcasm — not  to  be  despised 
when  he  was  once  aroused — was  never  more  fully  displayed  than  in  this 
communication  to  the  rash,  intruding  Mr.  Whalley. 

Nor  may  we  pass  from  this  recess  of  Parliament  without  noticing  the 
beginning  of  a  far  cry.  Now  it  was  that  the  phrase  "  Home  Rule  "  was 
first  distinctly  uttered  in  England.  As  usual,  Mr.  Gladstone  did  not  at 
once  or  readily  accept  either  the  phrase  or  the  fact.     About  this  time  he 


476  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

was  invited  to  Aberdeen  to  receive  what  is  denominated  the  freedom  of  the 
city.  In  the  interim  the  commotion  in  Ireland  had  continued.  That  class 
of  outrages  called  agrarian  increased,  and  it  was  found  that  Irish  juries 
summoned  to  try  persons  against  whom  such  crimes  were  alleged  stood 
with  their  countrymen,  and  returned  verdicts  against  the  landlords  which  if 
not  unjust  were  at  least  unlawful. 

In  delivering  his  speech  at  Aberdeen  Mr.  Gladstone  said,  in  passing, 
that  as  to  the  cry  of  Home  Rule  he  was  not  certain  what  it  meant.  He 
hoped  it  did  not  mean  the  breaking  up  of  the  United  Kingdom.  He  hoped 
that  all  those  his  hearers  as  well  as  himself  intended  that  the  kingdom 
should  remain  united.  He  said  that  he  was  induced  by  circumstances  to 
think  that  the  Irish  people  were  frequently  made  the  victims  of  political 
delusions.  He  went  on  to  say  that  all  had  been  conceded  by  Parliament — 
by  the  late  Parliament — which  Ireland  had  demanded.  "  This  Parliament," 
said  he,  "  has  done  for  Ireland  what  it  would  have  scrupled  to  do  for  Eng- 
land and  for  Scotland.  There  remains  now  a  single  grievance,  a  grievance 
with  regard  to  university  education,  which  is  not  so  entirely  free  in  Ireland 
as  it  has  now  been  made  in  England,  but  that  is  an  exceptional  subject,  and 
it  is  a  subject  on  which  I  am  bound  to  say  Ireland  has  made  no  united 
demand  upon  England  ;  still,  I  regard  it  as  a  subject  that  calls  for  legisla- 
tion, but  there  is  no  demand  which  Ireland  has  made  and  which  England  has 
refused  ;  and  I  shall  be  very  glad  to  see  such  a  demand  put  into  a  practical 
shape  in  which  we  may  make  it  the  subject  of  rational  and  candid  discussion." 

The  prime  minister  went  on  to  speak  of  the  relations  of  the  two  coun- 
tries— politically  one  country — in  a  spirit  of  commendable  candor.  He 
admitted  that  the  government  of  Ireland  had  been  hitherto  well-nigh  fatal 
to  her  growth.  He  thought  that,  under  the  circumstances,  complaint  ought 
not  to  be  made  of  Irish  progress.  He  thought  (the  reader  will  note  well 
what  he  thought  in  1871)  that  if  the  doctrines  of  Home  Rule  should  be 
applied  in  Ireland  then  Scotland  would  be  equally  entitled  to  Home  Rule, 
and  Wales  still  more  entitled  to  it.  In  Ireland  the  people  spoke  English, 
but  in  Wales  the  vernacular  Celtic  tongue. 

Then  the  speaker  cried  out :  "  Can  any  sensible  man,  can  any  rational 
man  suppose  that  at  this  time  of  day,  in  this  condition  of  the  world,  we 
are  going  to  disintegrate  the  great  capital  institutions  of  this  country  for  the 
purpose  of  making  ourselves  ridiculous  in  the  sight  of  all  mankind,  and 
crippling  any  power  we  possess  for  bestowing  benefits  in  legislation  on  the 
country  to  which  we  belong  }  "  Then  he  continued  :  "  We  desire  to  concil- 
iate Ireland,  we  desire  to  soothe  her  people — the  wounded  feelings  and  the 
painful  recollections  of  her  people.  We  desire  to  attach  her  to  this  island 
in  the  silken  cords  of  love  ;  but  there  was  a  higher  and  a  paramount  aim 
in  the  measures  that  Parliament  has  passed,  and  that  was  that  it  should  do 


DECLINE    OF    THE    REFORMATORY    MOVEMENT.  477 

its  duty.  It  was  to  set  itself  right  with  the  national  conscience,  with  the 
opinion  of  the  world,  and  with  the  principles  of  justice  ;  and  when  that  is 
done  I  state  fearlessly  that,  whether  conciliation  be  at  once  realized  or  not, 
the  position  of  this  country  is  firm  and  invulnerable." 

This  paragraph  illustrates  as  fully"  as  any  other  the  character  of  Wil- 
liam E.  Gladstone.  It  shows  his  method  and  intellectual  limitations.  He 
was  never  a  primary  leader  in  any  cause.  He  was  the  great  secondary 
leader  in  many  great  causes.  Here  we  see  him  in  his  attitude  on  the 
question  of  Home  Rule  in  Ireland  when  that  question  first  made  itself  an 
incipient  issue  in  Great  Britain.  It  was  a  far  call  from  this  position  to  that 
which  he  was  to  occupy  ten  years  afterward.  But  this  change  from  a  really 
conservative  to  an  essentially  progressive  mood  and  policy  on  Mr.  Glad- 
stone's part  was  of  the  essence,  the  intellectual  constitution,  of  the  man. 
He  must  always  be  viewed  from  this  point  of  observation.  He  was  a  cau- 
tious, prudent  man,  and  yet  a  courageous  man,  who  really  followed  his  con- 
victions. Sometimes  he  followed  them  at  a  considerable  distance  ;  but  he 
followed  them,  and  sooner  or  later  arrived  at  that  station  from  which  his 
great  character  is  best  and  most  critically  observed. 

Mr.  Gladstone  made  good  use  of  the  recess  after  the  parliamentary 
session  of  1871.  He  perceived  that  the  Liberal  ascendency  was  weakening, 
and  he  sought  to  shore  up  the  fortunes  of  his  party.  He  spoke  in  many 
places,  discussing  the  political  questions  of  the  day  and  defending  the  meas- 
ures of  the  late  Parliament.  At  Whitby  he  addressed  the  people  in  support 
of  the  Army  Regulation  Bill,  saying  that  that  measure  by  itself  was  suffi- 
cient to  entitle  the  Parliament  to  the  gratitude  of  the  country.  He  said 
that  the  House  of  Commons  had  exerted  itself  to  the  utmost  to  pass  the 
Ballot  Bill,  and  that  that  measure  had  been  rejected,  or  at  least  retarded,  in 
the  House  of  Lords. 

Just  at  this  juncture  there  had  appeared  an  anonymous  article  in  one 
of  the  reviews,  entitled  the  "  Battle  of  Dorking,"  which  was  a  mock-heroic 
description  of  the  work  of  the  recent  Parliament,  very  witty  and  withal 
dangerous  ,  for  it  was  calculated  to  scatter  alarm  on  the  score  of  the  covert 
implication  that  Great  Britain  was  losing — had  already  lost — her  prestige 
amone  the  nations.  Mr.  Gladstone  noticed  this  alarmist  article  in  his 
Whitby  speech,  saying  :  "  The  power  of  this  country  is  not  declining.  It 
is  increasing — increasing  in  itself,  and  I  believe  increasing  as  compared 
with  the  power  of  the  other  nations  of  Europe.  It  is  only  our  pride,  it  is 
only  our  passions,  it  is  only  our  follies  which  can  ever  constitute  a  real 
danger  to  us.  If  we  can  master  these  no  other  foe  can  hurt  us,  and  many 
a  long  year  will  make  its  round,  and  many  a  generation  of  men  'will  be 
gathered  to  its  fathers  before  the  country  in  which  we  are  born  and  which 
we  deeply  love  need  forfeit  or  lose  its  place  among  the  nations  of  the  world." 


47" 


LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 


More  notable  was  the  prime  minister's  address  to  the  people  at  Black- 
heath.  Much  excitement  existed  in  that  neighborhood  about  the  acts  of 
the  late  Parliament,  and  hot  prejudice  had  arisen  against  Mr.  Gladstone 
because  of  what  was  alleged  to  be  the  injuries  done  to  labor  by  the  recent 
legislation.  The  occasion  was  memorable.  Many  writers  have  regarded 
the  success  of  Mr.  Gladstone  at  Blackheath  as  one  of  the  most  marked 
instances  of  power  which  he  ever  displayed.  The  meeting  was  held  in  the 
open,  and  twenty  thousand  persons  were  thought  to  be  gathered  in  the 
assembled  crowd. 

It  was  a  rough  outpouring  of  burly  English  life,  and  the  day  was  cold 
and  dreary.  A  large  part  of  the  crowd  had  gathered  for  the  purpose  of 
hooting  down  the  speaker.  The  assemblage  was  not  unlike  a  mob.  Mr. 
Gladstone  had  a  grreat  followino-  in  the  crowd,  but  there  was  also  a  tremen- 
dous  force  against  him,  and  that  force  was  vociferous  and  insultinof.  It  had 
become  a  policy  with  the  Conservatives  to  bend  around  from  the  aristo- 
cratic end  of  society  and  unite  with  the  laboring  mass  of  society  in  the 
hope  of  inducing  the  latter  to  break  away  from  Liberal  control. 

All  these  conditions  Mr.  Gladstone  had  to  face.  He  entered  upon  the 
duty  of  the  hour  with  calmness  and  self-possession.  He  said  that  it  was  a 
misfortune  that  the  government  establishments  in  which  the  people  of 
Blackheath  district  were  so  much  interested  had  to  be  closed.  Perhaps 
three  fourths  of  such  establishments  were  shut  up  ;  but  this  was  the  direct 
result  of  the  policy  and  work,  not  of  the  Liberal  government  now  in  power, 
but  of  its  predecessor.  He  defended  the  Act  for  Abolishing  Purchase  in 
the  Army.  The  late  utterances  to  the  effect  that  the  British  army  was  in  a 
state  of  disorganization  were  wholly  unwarranted.  There  was  never  a  time 
when  Great  Britain  was  better  defended  by  her  military  arm.  The  speaker 
went  on  to  defend  Mr.  Cardwell,  the  war  minister,  saying  that  Great  Brit- 
ain had  rarely  if  ever  had  another  such  officer  in  the  War  Office,  and 
declaring  that  with  him  he  would  himself  stand  or  fall.  With  like  boldness 
he  defended  Mr.  Forster  s  Education  Act.  From  this  he  proceeded  to  discuss 
the  difficulties  in  the  educational  system  of  the  country  on  the  score  of  reli- 
gious biases.  He  said  that  he  was  not  willing  to  compel  a  religious  person 
to  send  his  children  to  school  under  conditions  that  were  against  the  con- 
science of  the  parent.  All  that  could  be  done  in  such  case  was  to  work 
expediently  and  prudently  toward  a  general  reform  that  might  be  tairly 
acceptable  to  all. 

During  this  discussion  Mr.  Gladstone  was  constantly  interrupted  by 
the  shouts  and  derisive  outcries  of  one  part  of  the  crowd  and  by  the  cheers 
of  the  other  part.  Gradually  he  gained  the  ascendency.  The  hisses  and 
groans  began  to  recede  from  the  stand  where  he  was  speaking  and  were 
at  last  heard   only  in  mutterings  and  low  noises   along  the  outskirts.     He 


DECLINE    OF    THE    REFORMATORY    MOVEMENT.  479 

spoke  for  fully  two  hours,  and  the  attempt  of  the  enemy  to  put  him  clown 
utterly  failed.  When  he  began  his  remarks  about  the  late  action  of  the 
House  of  Lords  and  to  say  something  about  the  constitution  of  that  body 
some  one  cried  out,  "  Leave  the  constitution  of  the  House  of  Lords  alone." 
To  this  Mr.  Gladstone  answered  :  "  I  am  not  prepared  to  agree  with  my 
friend  there,  because  the  constitution  of  the  House  of  Lords  has  often  been 
a  subject  of  consideration  amongst  the  wisest  and  most  sober-minded  men  ; 
as,  for  example,  when  a  proposal — of  which  my  triend  disapproves,  perhaps 
— was  made  a  few  years  ago  to  make  a  moderate  addition  to  the  House  of 
Lords  of  peers  holding  their  peerage  for  life.  I  am  not  going  to  discuss 
that  particular  measure  ;  I  will  only  say,  without  entering  into  details  that 
would  be  highly  interesting,  but  which  the  vast  range  of  the  subject  makes 
impossible  on  the  present  occasion — I  will  only  say  that  I  believe  there  are 
various  particulars  in  which  the  constitution  of  the  House  of  Lords  might, 
under  favorable  circumstances,  be  improved.  And  I  am  bound  to  say  that, 
though  I  believe  there  are  some  politicians  bearing  the  name  of  Liberal 
who  approve  the  proceedings  of  the  House  of  Lords  with  respect  to  the 
Ballot  Bill  at  the  close  of  last  session,  I  must  own  that  I  deeply  lament  that 
proceeding.  I  have  a  shrewd  suspicion  in  my  mind  that  a  very  large  pro- 
portion of  the  people  of  England  have  a  sneaking  kindness  for  the  hered- 
itary principle.  My  observation  has  not  been  of  a  very  brief  period,  and 
what  I  have  observed  is  this,  that  wherever  there  is  anything  to  be  done 
or  to  be  given  and  there  are  two  candidates  for  it  who  are  exactly  alike — 
alike  in  opinions,  alike  in  character,  alike  in  possessions — the  one  being  a 
commoner  and  the  other  a  lord,  the  Englishman  is  very  apt  indeed  to  pre- 
fer the  lord." 

In  the  remaining  parts  of  his  address  Mr.  Gladstone  touched  upon 
nearly  all  the  social  and  political  questions  of  the  day.  He  spoke  in  par- 
ticular of  the  effort  that  was  making  to  effect  a  union  of  the  working  classes 
and  the  Conservative  party.  This  movement  was  promoted  b)-  a  certain 
Mr.  Scott  Russell,  who  now  suffered  a  caustic  criticism  for  his  attitude  and 
effort.  The  speaker  showed  the  absurdity  of  the  attempted  combination 
of  the  aristocratic  and  commoner  elements  in  politics.  He  demonstrated 
that  no  such  union  could  exist,  and  that  the  Liberal  policy  was  the  true 
refuge  of  the  under  man  in  Great  Britain. 

The  premier  next  reverted  to  the  hackneyed  subject  of  free  trade,  and 
exalted  that  method  as  the  agency  by  which  twenty  million  pounds  in  taxa- 
tion had  been  thrown  off  by  the  British  nation  and  other  incalculable  bless- 
ings obtained.  In  conclusion  he  touched  upon  the  growth  of  luxury  and 
selfishness,  which  he  considered  the  enemies  of  the  national  welfare.  He 
said  that  it  was  necessary  that  labor  should  be  held  in  due  honor  and  the 
laborer  be  secured  in  all  his  rights.     Idleness,  he  said,  is  always  contempt- 


480  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM     E.    GLADSTONE. 

ible.  "  Depend  upon  it,  gentlemen,"  continued  the  prime  minister,  "  I  do 
but  speak  the  serious  and  solemn  truth  when  I  say  that  beneath  the  politi- 
cal questions  which  are  found  on  the  surface  lie  those  deeper  and  more 
searching  questions  that  enter  into  the  breast  and  strike  home  to  the  con- 
science and  mind  of  every  man  ;  and  it  is  upon  the  solution  of  these  ques- 
tions that  the  well-being  of  England  must  depend.  Gentlemen,  I  use  the 
words  of  a  popular  poet  when  I  give  vent  to  this  sentiment  of  hope  with 
which,  for  one,  I  venture  to  look  forward  to  the  future  of  this  country.     He 

says  : 

*  The  ancient  virtue  is  not  dead,  and  long  may  it  endure; 
May  wealth  in  England — ' 

and  I  am  sure  he  means  by  wealth  that  higher  sense  of  it — prosperity,  and 
sound  prosperity —  ^ 

'  May  wealth  in  England  never  fail,  nor  pity  for  the  poor.' 

May  strength  and  the  means  for  material  prosperity  never  be  wanting  to 
us  ;  but  it  is  far  more  important  that  there  shall  not  be  wanting  the  disposi- 
tion to  use  those  means  aright.  Gentlemen,  I  shall  go  from  this  meeting, 
having  given  you  the  best  account  of  my  position  in  my  feeble  power  with 
the  time  and  under  the  circumstances  of  the  day — I  shall  go  from  this 
meeting  strengthened  by  the  comfort  of  your  kindness  and  your  indulgence 
to  resume  my  humble  share  in  public  labors.  No  motive  will  more  operate 
upon  me  in  stimulating  me  to  the  discharge  of  duty  than  the  gratitude 
with  which  I  look  back  upon  the,  I  believe,  unexampled  circumstances  under 
which  you  made  me  your  representative.  But  I  shall  endeavor — I  shall 
make  it  my  hope — to  show  that  gratitude  less  by  words  of  idle  compliment 
or  hollow  flattery  than  by  a  manful  endeavor,  according  to  the  measure  of 
my  gifts,  humble  as  they  may  be,  to  render  service  to  the  queen  who  lives 
in  the  hearts  of  the  people  and  to  a  nation  with  respect  to  which  I  will  say 
that  through  all  posterity,  whether  it  be  praised  or  whether  it  be  blamed, 
whether  it  be  acquitted  or  whether  it  be  condemned,  it  will  be  acquitted  or 
condemned  upon  this  issue  of  having  made  a  good  or  bad  use  of  the  most 
splendid  opportunities,  of  having  turned  to  proper  account  or  failed  to  turn 
to  account  the  powers,  the  energies,  the  faculties  which  rank  the  people  of 
this  little  island  as  among  the  few  great  nations  that  have  stamped  their 
name  and  secured  their  fame  among  the  great  nations  of  the  world." 

Thus  ended  the  year  1871.  That  year  witnessed  much  in  the  legisla- 
tive progress  of  Great  Britain.  It  closed,  however,  with  a  manifest  decline 
in  the  spirit  of  reform.  The  people  began  to  weary  of  reform.  Many 
thought  that  reform  was  proceeding  too  rapidly  ;  some  that  it  had  already 
gone  too  far.  Many  were  like  that  class  of  Roman  citizens  who  were 
described  by  Caesar  as  cupidi  reriim  7iovarum  ;  that  is,  eager  for  new  con- 


DECLINE    OF    THE    REFORMATORY    MOVEMENT. 


481 


ditions.  On  the  whole  the  Liberal  party  was  gradually  losing  its  ground. 
One  might  see  far  off  the  premonition  of  a  Conservative  reaction  that 
would  reverse  with  an  irresistible  hand  the  prevailing  political  conditions. 

Just  at  the  close  of  the  year  the  popularity  of  the  reigning  house  was 
put  to  the  test  of  public  sympathy  by  the  serious,  even  critical,  illness  of 
Albert  Edward,  Prince  of  Wales.     The  heir  apparent,  while  visiting  Lord 


:i"^:'^- 


•■W.i»,Huttg<>M 


A    CRITICAL   QUESTION    IN    THE   HOUSE. 

Londesborough  at  his  house  near  Scarborough,  contracted  malarial  fever. 
It  appeared  afterward  that  the  place  w^as  infected.  Earl  Chesterfield  also  got 
the  fever  there  and  died.  The  Prince  of  Wales  manaofed  to  return  to 
Sandringham,  but  became  very  ill,  and  by  the  middle  of  the  month  his  life 
was  well-nigh  despaired  of.  The  14th  of  December  was  the  anniversary  of 
his  father's  death,  and  at  that  date  the  bulletins  scarcely  gave  any  hope  of 
his  recovery. 

The  prince  had  not  been  altogether  popular  with  the  English  people, 

though  he  had  many  winning  ways.      He  was  said  to  bear  in  character  and 

person  a  resemblance  to  Henry  VHI  of  great  memory.     When  it  w^as  seen, 

however,  that  the  prince  was  about  to  die  the  excitement  was  great  and  the 

31 


482  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

Sympathy  with  the  ro)al  family  sincere  and  universal.  On  the  day  after 
Christmas  the  queen  was  enabled  to  write  a  touching  letter  to  her  subjects, 
thanking  them  for  their  sympathies  and  announcing  the  almost  certain 
recovery  of  the  prince.  On  the  29th  of  February  following  she  sent  out 
a  second  letter  of  thanks  and  appreciation,  for  in  the  meanwhile  a  great 
thanksgiving  service  had  been  held  in  St.  Paul's  Cathedral  to  express  in  a 
formal  way  the  gratitude  of  the  nation  for  the  recovery  of  the  Prince  of 
Wales.  The  service  was  attended  by  the  queen  herself,  the  prince,  and 
other  members  of  the  royal  family.  Like  services  were  held  throughout  the 
kingdom,  and  it  was  demonstrated  that  the  reigning  house  still  rested  firmly 
on  the  afiections  and  loyalty  of  the  people. 

It  now  became  the  polic\'  of  the  opposition  to  damage  the  Liberal 
administration  with  a  view  of  destroying  it  by  degrees.  This  policy  showed 
itself  in  attacking  the  ministers  severallv  and  in  a  concentrated  fire  on  the 
premier.  The  queen's  speech  at  the  opening  of  Parliament,  or  rather  the 
debate  thereon,  was  not  permitted  to  pass  without  challenge  and  reckless 
attack.  Mr.  Disraeli  found  his  opportunity.  He  said  that  the  ministers  in 
the  late  recess  had  not  criven  the  nation  time  to  foro^et  anythinor.  He 
described  the  eovernment  as  havinof  existed  for  the  last  six  months  "  in  a 
blaze  of  apology  !"  He  said  that  this  was  a  new  system  in  English  politics. 
Then,  reverting  to  resolutions  that  had  been  offered,  he  said  :  "  The  notices 
of  motion  given  this  evening  will  afford  her  majesty's  government  ample 
opportunity  for  defending  their  conduct,  past  or  present.  If  it  is  in  the 
power  of  the  government  to  prove  to  the  country  that  our  naval  administra- 
tion is  such  as  befits  a  great  naval  power  they  will  soon  have  an  occasion  ot 
doing  so  ;  and  if  they  are  desirous  of  showing  that  one  of  the  transcendental 
privileges  of  a  strong  government  is  to  evade  Acts  of  Parliament  which  they 
have  themselves  passed,  I  believe,  from  what  caught  my  ear  this  evening. 
that  that  opportunity  will  also  soon  be  furnished  them."  In  a  like  vein  he 
proceeded  to  criticise  the  different  clauses  of  the  queen's  speech,  touching 
upon  the  Ballot  Bill,  the  Irish  question,  the  Washington  treaty,  etc. 
Respecting  the  late  treaty  with  our  country  he  was  especially  severe,  saying 
that  the  British  government  was  likely  to  fall  into  a  bog  out  of  which  the 
nation  could  be  extricated  only  at  the  expense  of  results  and  conditions  that 
would  be  appalling. 

All  this  was  in  Mr.  Disraeli's  accustomed  vein.  Mr.  Gladstone  replied 
with  perfect  equanimity,  challenging  the  scrutiny  of  Parliament  on  all  the 
measures  of  the  administration.  He  said  that  every  facility  would  be 
afforded  to  the  opposition  to  know  the  facts  and  the  spirit  of  the  recent 
legislation.  He  spoke  in  touching  terms  of  the  overpast  sickness  of  the 
Prince  of  Wales  ;  of  his  recovery  ;  of  the  gratitude  of  the  nation.  He  said 
that  the  Ballot  Bill  had  been  mentioned  first  in  the  Oueen's  Address  because 


DECLINE    OF    THE    REFORMATORY    MOVEMENT. 


48, 


that  measure  was  of  paramount  importance.  As  to  the  o-reat  matter  of  the 
Alabama  claims  it  was  the  duty  of  government  to  speak  of  that  in  tem- 
perate and  concihatory  terms.  He  thought  that  the  part  of  the  address 
referring  to  the  treaty  of  Washington  was  fully  adequate.  He  called  the 
attention  of  the  House  to  the  fact  that  the  representatives  of  Great  Britain 


PRINCE   OF    WALES. 


m  their  American  negotiations  had  never  admitted  the  validity  of  construc- 
tive or  secondary  damages  in  the  claims  of  the  United  States' against  Eng- 
land. It  was  true  that  large  concessions  had  been  made  to  the  American 
government;  but  such  were  justifiable.  The  American  government  had 
accepted  the  Interpretation  put  on  the  treaty  in  the  House  of  Lords  in  the 
previous  summer,  and  had  made  no  protest  against  it.  As  a  matter  of  fact 
the  American  construction   of  the  pending  difficulty  had  only  been   in  the 


484  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

possession  of  the  cabinet  for  a  week,  and  no  time  had  yet  been  found  in 
which  to  prepare  an  answer.  The  speaker  denied  that  the  treaty  of  Wash- 
ington was  ambiguous.  He  said  that  it  would  be  a  deduction  of  insanity  to 
force  upon  the  treaty  such  a  construction  as  tliat  with  which  Mr.  Disraeh 
had  chosen  to  alarm  the  House. 

At  this  juncture  some  of  the  appointments  made  by  the  government 
were  subjected  to  severe  criticism.  One  of  these  was  the  judicial  appoint- 
ment of  Sir  Robert  Collier.  Against  this  Lord  Chief  Justice  Cockburn  had 
protested  in  severest  terms.  A  vote  of  censure  against  the  government 
was  defeated  in  the  House  of  Lords  by  a  majority  of  only  two  votes.  The 
same  motion  was  made  in  the  House  of  Commons,  whereupon  a  heated 
debate  ensued  and  the  motion  was  rejected  by  a  majority  of  twenty-seven. 
In  similar  manner  came  up  the  appointment  made  by  the  prime  minister  of 
Rev.  Mr.  Harvey  to  a  vacancy  in  the  rectorship  of  Ewelme.  There  was  a 
statute  requiring  that  he  who  occupied  the  rectory  of  Ewelme  should  be  a 
member  of  the  Oxford  Convocation  ;  but  Mr,  Harvey  had  not  been  a  mem- 
ber of  that  body.  He  was  not  a  graduate  of  Oxford,  but  of  Cambridge. 
It  was  shown  that  Mr.  Harvey  was  made  a  member  of  the  Oxford  Convo- 
cation in  ordei''  to  make  him  eligible  for  the  appointment  of  rector  of 
Ewelme.  This  appeared  like  sharp  practice,  and  Mr.  Gladstone  was 
severely  criticised  ;  but  he  said  in  answer  with  much  spirit  that  he  had 
appointed  the  Rev.  Mr.  Harvey  because  of  his  fitness  for  the  office,  because 
of  his  health,  because  of  the  general  desirability  of  the  appointment,  and  not 
for  other  reasons,  and  that  no  apology  was  necessary  for  the  action. 

Early  in  the  parliamentary  session  of  1872  an  extraordinary  scene  was 
witnessed  in  the  House  of  Commons,  the  same  being  precipitated  b)'  a 
motion  of  Sir  Charles  Dilke,  That  noted  personage  had  recently,  in  a 
"public  address,  declared  himself  a  republican,  and  here  he  was  in  the  House 
of  Commons,  He  came  boldly  forward  with  a  resolution  inquiring  for  the 
facts  relative  to  the  Civil  List.  The  American  reader  will  understand  that 
this  is  the  name  of  the  provision  made  by  Parliament  for  the  maintenance 
of  the  sovereign  and  the  sovereign's  household.  It  is  \X\^ personal ^xox'xsxow 
for  the  queen's  support  and  for  the  support  of  the  members  of  the  family. 
The  sums  deemed  necessary  tor  such  support  are  generally  set  aside,  or 
voted,  at  the  beeinnino-  of  the  reiqfn,  and  certain  other  sums  are  voted  as 
circumstances  seem  to  suggest  or  demand. 

Nor  has  it  ever  been  the  usage  to  inquire  with  much  exactitude  into 
the  way  of  the  royal  expenditure  or  to  criticise  the  amount  of  it.  The 
expenses  in  question  are  regarded  in  the  nature  of  a  salary,  or  salaries,  and 
the  temper  of  Great  Britain  has  always  been  to  make  these  abundantly 
sufficient  and  to  say  but  little  about  it.  Sir  Charles  Dilke's  motion  was 
that  the  facts   should   be   reported  to  the   Commons,  and  the  motion  was 


DECLINE    OF    THE    REFORMATORY    MOVEMENT.  485 

admitted  by  the  speaker  as  bein^^  in  order.  An  inquiry  was  made  at  this 
juncture  by  Lord  Bury,  whether  Sir  Charles's  declaration  at  Newcastle  that 
he  was  a  republican  was  not  so  reflected  into  the  motion  which  he  had  made 
as  to  make  that  motion  inadmissible  in  Parliament  ;  but  this  was  decided 
in  the  negative,  and  Sir  Charles  Dilke  went  on  to  declare  his  reasons. 

In  the  course  of  this  Sir  Charles  apologized  for  having  erroneously 
said  that  the  queen  had  paid  no  income  taxes.  He  said  that  his  motive 
had  been  quickened  by  the  recent  grant  to  a  princess  and  by  the  secrecy 
which  was  maintained  in  the  royal  family  about  the  disposal  of  grants  made 
to  them,  particularly  the  secrecy  of  the  royal  wills.  He  thought  that  under 
the  privilege  thus  granted  to  the  crown  great  sums  of  money  had  been 
wasted  and  would  be  wasted  hereafter. 

Such  a  question  as  this  must  needs  be  answered  by  the  prime  minister. 
It  appears  that  it  would  have  been  better  in  the  present  instance  to  have 
made  no  reply,  but  rather  to  have  permitted  the  House  to  go  at  once  to  a 
vote.  But  Mr,  Gladstone  spoke,  and  charged  that  Sir  Charles  Dilke  had 
been  reckless  in  stating  as  facts  what  were  not  facts  at  all.  He  said  that 
Sir  Charles's  charges  fell  wide  of  the  mark,  and  that  the  mover  of  the  reso- 
lution had  brought  an  ominous  shadow  on  himself  and  his  motion  by  his 
ill-timed  declaration  at  Newcastle.  He  went  on  to  say  that  Sir  Charles 
ought  to  have  remembered  that  not  the  royal  family,  but  the  British  Parlia- 
ment was  solely  responsible  for  the  Civil  List.  Such  a  motion  as  that  offered 
by  the  right  honorable  gentleman  could  not  be  entertained,  if  for  no  other 
reason,  then  because  he  had  declared  against  the  existing  form  of  govern- 
ment. As  to  the  queen,  Mr.  Gladstone  said  that  she  had  faithfully  kept  her 
compact  with  the  nation  and  that  she  had  been  generous  to  a  fault — that 
she  had  expended,  for  example,  six  hundred  thousand  pounds  on  private 
pensions.  Parliament  could  not  reopen  the  question  of  the  settlement  which 
had  been  made  with  her  majesty  at  the  beginning  of  her  reign.  Let  the 
motion  be  rejected. 

We  need  not  here  attempt  the  description  of  the  scene  that  ensued  in 
the  House.  It  has  been  described  by  many  as  the  most  disgraceful  uproar 
and  mHce  witnessed  in  Parliament  in  the  present  century.  The  members 
undertook  to  hoot  down  Sir  Charles  Dilke  and  bury  both  him  and  his 
motion  under  the  mountain  of  contempt;  but  the  effort  was  not  successful. 
The  House  became  a  mob,  and  the  business  raged  on  for  about  an  hour  in 
utter  tumult,  when  Sir  Charles  succeeded  in  securing  a  division  of  the 
House  and  in  gaining  hvo  votes  for  his  resolution.  History  preserves  the 
names  of  these  two — Mr.  George  Anderson  and  Sir  William  Lawson.  That 
may  be  regarded  as  the  republican  strength  in  Great  Britain  in  the  year 
1872! 

The  reader  will  remember  that  the  Ballot  Bill  had  now  been  for  about 


486  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

a  year  in  a  state  of  suspended  animation.  Its  reintroduction  to  the  House 
was  effected  by  Mr.  William  E,  Forster,  and  the  measure  was  passed  to  the 
second  reading.  The  debates  continued,  much  being  said  against  extending 
the  privilege  of  secret  voting  to  the  electors.  The  general  claim  of  the 
opponents  of  the  bill  was  that  if  the  suffrage  were  exercised  privately  then 
the  ballot  would  be  corrupted  by  purchase.  It  was  alleged  that  with  a 
secret  ballot  whole  electoral  districts  would  be  bought. 

While  matters  dragged  along  Sir  William  Vernon  Harcourt  offered  an 
amendment  which  was  carried  adversely  to  the  government  by  a  majority 
of  twenty-eight.  The  proposition  was  to  this  effect :  "No  person  shall, 
directly  or  indirectly,  induce  any  voter  to  display  his  ballot  paper  after  he 
shall  have  marked  the  same,  so  as  to  make  known  to  any  person  the  name 
of  the  candidate  for  or  against  whoni  he  has  so  marked  his  vote."  This 
amendment  was,  as  we  have  said,  carried  over  the  government,  and  the  bill 
so  amended  was  at  last  adopted  by  a  majority  of  fifty-eight.  In  the  House 
of  Lords  the  measure  was  taken  up  and  an  amendment  passed  making  the 
ballot  optiojial !  But  this  in  the  House  of  Commons  was  disagreed  to, 
since  it  was  opposed  to  the  spirit  of  the  measure,  which  was  to  make  the 
voting  strictly  private  and  personal.  There  were  at  this  time  sharp  encoun- 
ters between  Mr.  Gladstone  and  the  leader  of  the  opposition  ;  but  the  same 
was  in  the  nature  of  repartee  and  running  fire  rather  than  of  set  speech. 
The  disagreement  of  the  two  houses  on  the  Ballot  Bill  was  at  length  bridged 
over  with  compromise,  and  the  measure  became  a  law. 

We  now  come  to  the  great  episode  of  the  settlement  of  the  Alabama 
claims.  Great  Britain  was  at  last  arrested  by  the  soft  but  resolute  hand  of 
history  and  obliged  to  swallow  a  bitter  draught.  The  Board  of  Arbitration 
provided  for  by  the  treaty  of  Washington  met  in  Geneva,  Switzerland,  in 
December  of  1871  ;  but  having  organized  and  heard  the  pleas  of  the  parties 
the  body  was  adjourned  until  the  following  June.  Meanwhile  the  British 
public  became  informed,  perhaps  for  the  first  time,  of  the  real  condition  in 
which  the  nation  had  been  placed.  Great  Britain  never  understands  that 
she  has  done  wrong  until  she  is  finally  arrested  and  presented  with  a  bill  of 
particulars.  The  bill  in  this  case  was  sufficiently  alarming.  The  American 
orovernment  made  out  a  claim  under  two  heads  :  the  first  for  direct  dam- 
ages,  and  the  second  for  indirect  or  consequential  damages.  Under  the 
latter  head  was  included  the  general  plea  that  by  the  conduct  of  Great 
Britain  durino-  our  civil  war  American  commerce  had  been  virtuallv 
destroyed  or  (which  was  the  same  thing)  transferred  to  the  British  marine. 
The  claim,  when  published,  agitated  British  society  to  the  foundation. 
There  were  angry  protests  heard  on  every  hand  ;  but  the  matter  had  now 
got  itself  under  way  and  must  be  left  to  work  out  its  own  results. 

The  Board  of  Arbitration  at  Geneva  consisted  of  five  menibers  :  Count 


I 


DECLINE    OF    THE    REFORMATORY    MOVEMENT.  487 

Frederick  Sclopis,  appointed  by  the  King  of  Italy,  President;  the  Baron 
Jaques  StzempHi,  appointed  by  the  President  of  the  Swiss  RepubHc  ;  the 
Viscount  d'ltajuba,  appointed  by  the  Emperor  of  Brazil;  Sir  Alexander 
Cockburn,  Chief  Justice  of  Great  Britain;  and  Charles  Francis  Adams, 
appointed  by  the  President  of  the  United  States.  The  agent  for  Great 
Britain  was  Lord  Tenterden,  and  the  counsel  Sir  Roundell  Palnier ;  the 
agent  for  the  United  States  was  J.  C.  Bancroft  Davis,  and  the  counsel  Wil- 
liam M.  Evarts,  Caleb  Cushing,  and  Morrison  R.  Waite.  Soon  the  business 
was  under  way.  After  much  discussion  the  indirect  claims  of  the  United 
States  were  disallowed,  and  President  Grant  ordered  their  withdrawal. 
Then  the  debates  continued  until  the  14th  of  September  on  the  question  of 
the  direct  claims  of  our  government,  and  those  claims  were  allowed,  namely, 
for  injuries  done  by  the  cruisers  Alabama,  Florida,  Shenandoah,  and  Georgia, 
with  their  tenders,  to  the  amount  of  fifteen  million  five  hundred  thousand 
dollars  in  gold,  equal  to  three  million  two  hundred  and  twenty-nine  thousand 
one  hundred  and  sixty-six  pounds  sterling.  It  was  sufficient  !  Though  our 
government  was  obliged  to  give  up  the  claim  for  indirect  or  consequential 
damages,  it  nevertheless  carried  the  claim  for  direct  damages  to  a  successful 
issue,  and  an  international  fine  of  no  mean  character  was  justly  assessed  on 
the  mistress  of  the  seas. 

The  sequel  was  not  wholly  pleasant.  Chief  Justice  Cockburn  would 
not  sign  the  decision  against  his  country.  On  the  contrary,  he  published  a 
prodigious  document  of  many  hundreds  of  pages,  trying  to  prove  that  the 
judgment  of  his  peers  was  incorrect.  The  most  that  he  would  do  was  to 
admit  the  claims  for  ravages  done  by  the  Alabama,  but  not  for  those  com- 
mitted by  the  Florida,  the  Shenandoah,  and  the  Georgia.  Sir  Alexander's 
protest,  however,  was  in  vain,  and  Great  Britain  was  obliged  under  the  deci- 
sion of  the  Geneva  tribunal  to  pay  the  damages. 

Thus  was  concluded  the  not  unimportant  legislation  of  1872,  and  that 
of  1873  was  like  it,  but  more  critical.  Indeed,  it  proved  to  be  most  critical 
for  the  Liberal  part)-  and  for  Mr.  Gladstone  as  prime  minister.  The  reader 
will  understand  that  the  life  of  Gladstone  was  essentially  the  life  of  a  public 
man.  More  than  almost  any  other  Englishman  of  this  century  his  activi- 
ties were  of  a  public  character.  Even  his  literary  works  have  partaken  of 
the  essential  element  in  his  career,  namely,  its  publicity.  For  a  long 
period  the  line  of  his  life  was  drawn  through  Parliament  ;  and  for  a  con- 
siderable period  parliamentary  history  was  arranged  around  that  line  as  its 
central  cord. 

For  these  reasons  we  dwell  upon  tlie  great  episodes  in  his  parliamen- 
tary career.  In  doing  so  we  come  at  length  to  the  period  when  and  the 
fact  with  which  his  career  as  first  minister  of  the  crown  was  for  the  time  con- 
cluded.    The  fact  in  question  was  the  attempt,  at  the  spring  session  of  Par- 


488  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

liament,  1873,  ^^  pass  the  Irish  University  Bill.  This  measure  was  essentially 
Gladstonian  in  its  conception  and  formulation.  The  prime  minister  brought 
the  bill  into  the  House  on  the  13th  of  Februar)-,  1873,  ^^^^  i'"'  presenting  it 
spoke  at  great  length.  He  said  that  he  reckoned  the  measure  hardly  second 
in  importance  to  the  Irish  Church  Bill  and  the  Irish  Land  Acts.  He  recog- 
nized the  difficulty  and  complexity  of  the  measure.  He  perceived  that  it 
would  be  almost  impossible  to  secure  unanimity  of  opinion  for  the  measure, 
though  he  strenuously  sought  to  do  so.  He  regarded  his  proposition  as 
essential  to  the  welfare  of  Ireland.  He  denied  that  Ireland  was  an  unfruit- 
ful field  for  parliamentary  endeavor.  He  urged  upon  the  attention  of  the 
House  the  improved  condition  of  that  country.  There  treasonable  crimes 
had  ceased  to  exist.  There  the  agrarian  outrages  had  almost  disappeared. 
There  common  crimes  against  the  law  were  less  frequent  than  in  England. 
There  industry  was  flourishing,  there  wealth  had  increased,  and  there  pub- 
lic order  was  maintained.  Much  of  all  this  benefit  must  be  referred  to  the 
recent  Liberal  legislation  respecting  that  country. 

The  speaker  next  noticed  some  late  publications  that  had  been  made 
relative  to  the  purposes  of  the  government,  and  in  particular  with  regard  to 
himself.  It  was  charged  that  he  had^yielded  to  the  influence  of  the  Ultra- 
montane party  (that  is  the  Italian-Romanist  party\  and  was  currying  favor 
with  Rome.  Such  intimations  were  without  foundation  in  fact.  The  gov- 
ernment, he  said,  had  not  been  consulting  with  the  bishops  of  Ireland  or 
with  anybody  especially  concerned  in  the  higher  education  in  that  country. 
The  measure  which  he  was  about  to  propose  rested  on  other  foundations. 
It  rested  on  truth,  on  equity,  on  justice.  He  was  well  aware  of  a  disposition 
in  England  to  attribute  any  legislation  that  might  favorably  affect  Roman 
Catholics  to  an  Ultramontane  influence.  It  was  natural  that  the  prejudices 
of  a  great  portion  of  the  English  people  should  be  aroused  by  charges  of 
this  kind. 

For  his  part,  said  the  prime  minister,  there  appeared  only  one  of  two 
courses  to  be  taken  at  the  present  juncture;  only  one  decision  to  be  reached 
with  respect  to  the  Roman  Catholic  subjects  of  Great  Britain.  The  plain 
question,  said  he,  is  this  :  "  Do  we  intend,  or  do  we  not  intend  to  extend  to 
them  [meaning  the  Roman  Catholics]  the  full  benefit  of  civil  equality  on  a 
footing  exactly  the  same  as  that  on  which  it  is  granted  to  members  of  other 
religious  persuasions  ?  If  we  do  not  the  conclusion  is  a  most  grave  one  ; 
but  if  the  House  be  of  opinion,  as  the  government  are  of  opinion,  that  it  is 
neither  generous  nor  politic,  whatever  we  may  think  of  this  ecclesiastical 
influence  within  the  Roman  Church,  to  draw  distinctions,  in  matters  purely 
civil,  adverse  to  our  own  Catholic  fellow-countrymen — if  we  hold  that  opin- 
ion, let  us  hold  it  frankly  and  boldly  ;  and,  having  determined  to  grant 
measures  of  equality  as  far  as  it  may  be  in  our  power  to  do  so,  do  not  let  us 


DECLINE    OF    THE    REFORMATORY    MOVEMENT.  489 

attempt  to  stint  our  action  in  that  sense  when  we  come  to  the  execution  of 
that  which  we  have  announced  to  be  our  design." 

The  prime  minister  in  the  next  place  touched  upon  denominational 
endowments  in  educational  institutions,  and  said  that  the  government  were 
precluded  by  their  pledges  and  by  their  opinions  from  interfering  therewith. 
In  the  next  place  he  launched  boldly  into  the  question  of  the  abuses  that 
existed  in  the  university  system  of  Ireland.  In  that  country  the  Roman 
Catholics  were  not  able  to  avail  themselves,  or  at  least  they  could  not,  under 
the  rule  of  their  religious  opinions,  avail  themselves  of  the  privileges  of  col- 
leges and  universities — unless  it  were  such  as  they  created  and  supported 
for  themselves.  The  Presbyterians  of  Ireland  were  in  the  same  category. 
This  condition  of  affairs  was  a  deep-seated  religious  grievance  which  the 
government  now  wished  to  remove  in  the  interest  of  equity  and  justice 
equally  dispensed  to  all  subjects  of  the  crown. 

Mr.  Gladstone  then  proceeded  to  lay  before  the  House  certain  statis- 
tics. There  were  in  Dublin  University  and  the  Queen's  Universities  only 
one  hundred  and  forty-five  Roman  Catholic  students  in  the  arts.  The  total 
number  of  such  students  in  Ireland  was  one  thousand  one  hundred  and 
seventy-nine.  Yet  the  Roman  Catholics  were  nearly  three  fourths  of  the 
whole  Irish  population.  Here,  then,  was  the  grievance.  Nor  was  the  griev- 
ance tending  to  abatement.  On  the  contrary,  it  was  becoming  worse  from 
year  to  year.  The  disproportion  in  the  numbers  of  Catholic  and  Protes- 
tant students  in  Ireland  was  then  greater  than  ever  before.  The  Catholics 
were  availing  themselves  of  the  university  privilege  in  a  less  degree  than  at 
any  former  time.  There  were  pro  rata  of  the  population  almost  ten  times 
as  many  students  in  Scotland  as  there  were  in  Ireland  !  This  state  of  facts 
was  a  national  scandal.  There  had  been  efforts  made  to  remove  the 
reproach — to  increase  the  attendance  at  the  Irish  universities.  The  endow- 
ments had  been  improved.  New  colleges  had  been  provided,  and  yet  there 
were  fewer  students  in  the  arts  in  the  Irish  universities  than  there  had  been 
forty  years  ago  ! 

In  the  next  place  Mr.  Gladstone  entered  upon  a  sketch  of  the  history 
of  the  Irish  universities.  He  called  attention  to  the  fact  that  at  Dublin 
Trinity  College  had  got  out  of  all  relation  with  the  university  of  which  it 
was  logically  a  part  There  had  been  several  colleges  there,  but  only  Trinity 
survived.  And  yet  the  University  of  Dublin  was  the  legitimate  university 
of  Ireland.  This  condition  of  affairs  called  loudly  for  a  reform.  Trinity 
College  ought  to  be  brought  into  its  true  historical  relations  with  Dublin 
University.  It  was  a  part  of  the  bill  proposed  to  do  that.  It  was  also 
proposed  that  the  Queen's  Colleges  at  Belfast  and  Cork  should  be 
made  parts  of  a  university  system.  As  to  the  Galway  College,  that 
institution,   he  thought,  ought   to   be   closed   within    a  period  of  two  years. 


490 


LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 


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DECLINE    OF    THE    REFORMATORY    MOVEMENT.  49I 

The  so-called  Queen's  University  should  be  merged  with  the  University 
of  Dublin. 

As  to  these  institutions — all  of  them — religious  tests  should  be  abol- 
ished. The  university  should  be  freed  from  the  unnatural  domination  of  the 
colleges.  Members  should  be  admitted  into  the  university,  whether  they 
belonged  to  any  of  the  colleges  or  not,  according  to  fitness.  The  colleges 
should  be  made  contributory  to  the  university,  and  not  it  to  them. 

Owing  to  the  peculiar  religious  condition  of  Ireland  the  premier  thought 
that  a  limit  should  be  laid  on  the  teaching  of  certain  academical  branches. 
There  should  be  constituted  a  governing  body,  under  the  authority  of  the 
crown  and  Parliament,  to  which  the  university  should  be  subject.  Within 
two  years  the  prerogatives  of  the  present  Provost  and  the  seven  Senior 
Fellows,  who  together  constitute  the  governing  body  of  Trinity  College, 
should  be  surrendered  to  the  new  organization.  Between  the  years  1875 
and  1885  a  transformation  should  be  effected  from  the  old  system  to  the 
new,  and  after  the  latter  date  the  new  should  wholh'  prevail. 

The  University  of  Dublin  should  be  incorporated.  The  theological 
faculty  of  Trinity  College  should  be  separated  from  that  institution  and 
should  be  subject  to  the  governing  body  of  the  Disestablished  Church.  Not 
only  the  Queen's  Colleges  of  Cork  and  Belfast,  but  the  Catholic  University 
and  Magee  College,  should  become  integral  parts  of  the  new  university  ;  and 
other  institutions  of  academical  grade  might  do  the  same.  The  new  gov- 
erning body  of  the  University  of  Dublin  should  consist  of  twenty-eight 
members,  who  should  be  nominated  in  the  Act  which  the  prime  minister 
was  explaining.  Vacancies  should  be  filled  in  such  and  such  a  manner. 
The  University  Senate  should  be  composed  of  the  Doctors  and  Masters  of 
Arts  who  remained  in  affiliation  with  the  institution.  The  Senate  would 
include  the  present  senators  of  Dublin  and  Queen's  Universities.  In  the 
new  institution  there  should  be  both  teaching  and  examinations  ;  and  as  to 
securities  for  freedom  of  conscience,  Mr.  Gladstone  recommended  that  there 
should  be  in  the  university  no  chairs  in  theology,  in  moral  philosophy,  or 
in  modern  history.*  In  the  last  two  studies  no  student  should  be  examined 
against  his  will  or  be  excluded  from  other  university  examinations  on  that 
account. 

In  the  further  exposition  of  his  plan  he  showed  that  the  colleges  of 
Cork   and    Belfast,  as   well   as    Magee   College   and    the    Roman   Catholic 


*The  American  reader  may  well  be  surprised  at  this  part  of  the  Gladstonian  scheme.  It  is  not  difficult  to 
understand  how  Roman  Catholic  and  Episcopal  students  in  an  Irish  university  cannot  be  taught  the  same 
theology.  But  why  should  the  moral  philosophy  be  administered  to  the  two  kinds  with  different  utensils  and  in 
different  measure  ?  It  might  well  appear  that  moral  philosophy  is  moral  philosophy  the  world  over,  from  the 
Vistula  to  Finisterre ;  from  the  Congo  to  Puget  Sound.  And  as  to  modern  history,  why  should  that  be  taught  to 
please  either  Catholic  or  Protestant,  or  indeed  any  other  son  of  the  human  race  forever?  History  is  not  taught  to 
please,  but  to  instruct  ! 


492  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

university,  would  become  parts  of  the  larger  university,  and  that  other  like 
institutions  would  be  affiliated  in  the  same  manner.  He  proposed  that  the 
new  governino-  body  of  Dublin  University  be  constituted  of  twenty-eight 
members,  who  were  to  be  nominated  in  the  Act.  Of  these  four  were  to 
retire  annually,  and  the  crown  and  the  corporation  were  to  act  together  in 
the  appointment  of  successors  to  all  vacancies.  The  bill  provided  that  each 
college  having  as  many  as  one  hundred  and  fifty  students  might  elect  two 
members  of  the  governing  body.     Etc.,  etc. 

The  financial  arrangements  presented  features  of  particular  difficulty. 
Mr.  Gladstone  said  that  it  would  be  necessary  to  take  from  the  existing 
revenues  of  Trinity  College  an  annual  contribution  of  about  twelve  thousand 
pounds  for  the  benefit  of  the  new  university.  This  was  a  large  sum  to  be 
withdrawn,  but  he  thought  the  reduction  might  be  made  ;  for  Trinity  College 
would  still  remain  the  richest  institution  of  the  kind  in  existence.  He 
thought  it  might  be  expedient  to  withdraw  in  like  manner  certain  sums  from 
the  revenues  of  Oxford  and  Cambridge.  As  to  the  sum  required  for  the 
new  university,  the  premier  placed  the  amount  at  fifty  thousand  pounds. 
This  sum  he  would  divide  in  halves  ;  one  half  he  would  reserve  strictly  for 
the  encouragement  of  learning.  He  would  establish  ten  annual  fellowships 
of  two  hundred  pounds  each.  These  would  hold  for  a  period  of  five  years. 
There  should  be  twenty-five  exhibitions  given  annually,  at  an  expense  of 
fifty  pounds  each.  There  should  be  one  hundred  bursaries  annually,  of 
twenty-five  pounds  each  ;  these  should  be  established  for  four  years.  For 
the  professors  proper  twenty  thousand  pounds  should  be  set  aside.  The 
expense  of  the  examinations,  together  with  the  cost  of  maintaining  build- 
ings, etc.,  should  be  at  a  maximum  of  five  thousand  pounds.  In  order  to 
meet  the  sum  of  these  expenditures  Trinity  College  should  furnish,  as  said 
above,  twelve  thousand  pounds ;  the  Consolidated  Fund,  ten  thousand 
pounds;  while  five  thousand  pounds  should  be  secured  from  fees  and  from 
the  residue  of  the  proceeds  of  the  ecclesiastical  property  of  Ireland. 

The  premier  next  pointed  out  the  method  for  the  establishment  of  self- 
government  at  Trinity  College.  This  scheme  was  to  extend  also  to  the 
other  institutions  constituting  a  part  of  the  new  university.  Each  institu- 
tion should  divide  its  powers  between  the  laity  and  the  Church  authorities, 
according  to  its  own  preference.  Legislation  in  this  particular  should  be 
open  and  impartial.  Having  concluded  the  outline  of  his  plan  Mr.  Glad- 
stone brought  his  speech  to  a  close  with  a  eulogium  on  Trinity  College,  in 
which  he  expressed  the  hope  that  that  institution  would  remain  forever  in 
dispensation  of  unmeasured  blessings  to  mankind.  The  power  of  the  col- 
lege, he  believed,  would  be  increased  for  good  under  the  new  system  which 
he  presented.  The  subordinate  institutions  should  enjoy  perfect  freedom 
as  it  respected  themselves.     Etc.,  etc. 


I 


DECLINE    OF    THE    REFORMATORY    MOVEMENT.  493 

The  great  measure  thus  proposed  by  the  prime  minister  for  the  recti- 
fication of  the  higher  educational  system  of  Ireland  was  of  precisely  the 
kind  to  evoke  the  hottest  opposition.  Certainly  in  the  British  Parliament 
such  a  measure  will  never  pass  unassailed.  In  the  present  instance  the 
shrewd  Mr.  Disraeli  asked  that  the  bill,  that  is,  the  second  reading  of  the 
measure,  should' be  postponed  for  three  weeks  in  order  that  her  majesty's 
opposition  might  consider  it.  The  bill  was  accordingly  laid  over  until  the 
3d  of  March.  The  first  impression  produced  on  the  House  and  on  the 
countr)'  was  favorable,  but  it  was  not  long  until  this  impression  was  replaced 
with  another  of  an  opposite  character. 

The  first  outbreak  of  antagonism  was  on  the  part  of  the  Roman 
Catholic  bishops  of  Ireland,  and  indeed  of  England,  who,  with  the  full  per- 
suasion and  manner  of  their  kind,  grabbed  for  the  concession  which  the 
government  seemed  to  mal^e,  and  at  the  same  time  raised  an  outcry  for 
more  than  any  British  government  could  possibly  concede.  The  fact  was — 
and  is — that  the  bishops  wanted  to  construct  the  whole  scheme  of  education 
in  their  own  interest  and  from  the  Church  point  of  view.  Nothing  short  of 
this  would  ever  satisfy  them.  The  Gladstonian  scheme  was  secular.  It 
provided  for  the  equal  rights  of  Catholics,  but  did  not  concede  to  Catholics 
or  any  other  denomination  the  right  to  create  a  system  of  education  wholly 
in  its  own  interest.  This,  we  think,  was  the  real  rock  on  which  Mr.  Glad- 
stone's educational  ship  was  destined  to  be  wrecked. 

At  any  rate  the  Roman  Catholic  bishops,  whom,  as  we  think,  Mr.  Glad- 
stone expected  to  recognize  the  generosity  and  coming  benefit  of  the  pro- 
posed measure,  raised  an  outcry  ;  and  such  was  their  influence  that  the  Irish 
members  of  Parliament  took  up  the  hue  and  followed  in  the  train.  This  of 
itself  produced  a  large  defection  in  the  Liberal  ranks.  Another  objection 
came  from  Mr,  Bourke,  who  complained  that  the  bill  provided  for  the 
appointment  of  a  governing  body  of  twenty-eight  members,  without  indi- 
cating who  they  were  to  be.  The  gentleman  gave  notice  that  he  would 
move  an  amendment  demanding;  to  know  the  ministerial  nominees  for  mem- 
bership  in  the  governing  board. 

Jealousies  now  broke  out  all  around  the  horizon.  The  advanced 
Liberals  w^ould  not  support  the  bill,  for  in  it  they  thought  the}-  discovered 
a  purpose  to  retain  Church  influence  in  a  paramount  way  in  the  university 
system  and  management.  They  for  their  part  were  anxious  that  the  uni- 
versity should  be  secularized  completely — that  it  should  not  be  a  system  in 
which  the  concurrent  influences  of  Episcopalianism,  Presbyterianism,  Roman 
Catholicism,  and  what  not  besides,  should  flow  together  and  mingle  as  best 
they  might,  but  a  true  system  of  independent,  secular  control,  rising  above 
all  the  religious  factions  that  were  warring  in  Ireland.  And  indeed  this  was 
a  valid  objection  to  the  bill.     As  for  the  Protestant  Conservatives  in  Parlia- 


494  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAINI    E.    GLADSTONE. 

ment,  they  opposed  it  because  it  conceded  to  the  Catholics  the  common 
right  with  others  to  be  educated  in  the  public  institutions  of  learning. 

Mr.  Gladstone  found  himself  thus  hemmed  in  and  badgered  with  a 
number  of  antagonisms  and  antagonists  upon  which  and  whom  he  had 
rather  counted  for  support.  But  he  proceeded  in  his  usual  manner  to  defend 
the  pending  measure,  speaking  in  particular  to  the  objection  offered  by  Mr. 
Bourke.  He  showed  that  it  would  not  only  be  improper  but  absurd  to 
present  the  names  of  the  proposed  governing  body  in  a  bill  the  second 
reading  of  which  had  not  yet  been  ordered  in  the  House.  The  nomination 
of  such  members  would  follow  at  the  proper  stage  of  the  proceedings,  and 
the  House,  he  did  not  doubt,  would  be  ready  to  ratify  the  action  of  the 
government  in  naming  the  members  of  the  governing  board. 

Nevertheless  Mr.  Bourke  presented  his  amendment  and  Lord  Fitz- 
maurice  seconded  it,  making  a  denunciatory  speech  against  the  bill  as  calcu- 
lated to  destroy  the  Protestant  system  of  education.  The  debate  broke  out 
all  along  the  line.  The  representatives  of  the  Catholic  establishment 
declared  that  they  would  have  a  separate  Catholic  university  or  nothing. 
It  was  denominational  education  which  they  demanded,  in  accordance  with 
a  system  to  be  controlled  by  themselves.  Mr.  Fawcett  delivered  ^a  tirade 
saying  that  the  effect  of  such  a  bill  as  that  now  proposed  would  be  to  make 
the  educational  confusion  in  Ireland  still  worse  confounded.  Moreover,  the 
plan  of  reorganization  here  presented  was  in  the  nature  of  a  patchw^ork 
compromise  the  design  of  which  on  the  part  of  its  creators  had  been  to 
curry  favor  with  everybody,  when  in  point  of  fact  the  measure,  as  soon  as  it 
was  revealed,  displeased  everybody,  satisf^dng  none. 

Already  the  bill  was  hard  pressed  by  its  enemies.  The  erratic  Mr. 
Horsman  entered  the  arena  with  his  usual  vehemence  and  began  to  declaim, 
whereupon  Mr.  Lowe,  chancellor  of  the  exchequer,  drew^  a  letter  on  the 
gentleman  which  he  had  recently  written  in  high  praise  of  the  very  bill 
Avhich  he  was  now  denouncing!  The  letter  said  that  Mr.  Gladstone  had 
introduced  a  measure  of  university  education  that  did  him  great  honor,  and 
that  it  would  take  its  place  on  the  statute  book  as  the  crowning  work  of  the 
present  Parliament.  "  We  must  all  resume  its  consideration,"  continued  the 
writer,  "with  an  earnest  desire  to  acknowledge  the  large  and  generous  spirit 
with  which  the  government  had  addressed  itself  to  the  subject,  and  cooper- 
ate with  the  high  purposes  it  has  in  view,"  etc.,  etc.  In  the  face  of  this 
Mr.  Horsman  was  now  saying,  "  Why  does  not  the  government  withdraw 
the  bill  .^  Nobody  wants  it — nobody  accepts  it — it  settles  nothing,  but 
unsettles  everybody." 

This  retort  on  Mr.  Horsman  was  certainly  sufficient  to  extinguish  him 
so  far  as  the  pending  discussion  was  concerned.  Mr.  Lowe  continued  to 
speak  with  great  cogency  and   effectiveness   in  favor  of  the  bill.     He  called 


DECLINE    OF    THE    REFORMATORY    MOVEMENT. 


495 


attention  to  the  fact  that  a  good  deal  of  the  trouble  before  the  House  arose 
from  the  confusion  of  the  words  "university"  and  "college."  It  was  the 
purpose  of  the  bill  to  gather  a  number  of  colleges,  that  is,  teaching  institu- 
tions, into  a  single  organic  whole  which  was  also  a  teaching  institution,  but 
having  the  power  to  confer  degrees  and  exercise  a  general  control  over  the 
whole  system.  The  speaker  pointed  to  the  necessities  out  of  which  the 
measure  had  arisen,  namely,  the  imperfect  constitution  of  Trinity  Colleo-e, 
the  inadequacy  of  the  instruction  at  the  Queen's  Colleges,  and  more  especially 
the  refusal  of  the  Roman  Catholics  of  Ireland  to  avail  themselves  of  either 
the  one  or  the  other.  As  to  the  opposition  which  the  Catholic  bishops 
now  showed  to  the  bill  which  was  intended  to  favor  them  and  their  follow- 
ing, that  opposition,  said  Mr.  Lowe,  ought  to  be  regarded  as  a  sort  of  natural 
calamity  like  an  earthquake,  which,  while  it  was  disastrous,  could  not  well  be 
avoided  ! 

The  University  Bill  as  a  whole,  the  speaker  contended,  was  well  calcu- 
lated to  alleviate  the  distresses  of  the  Roman  Catholic  population  of 
Ireland,  and,  in  general,  to  improve  the  whole  educational  condition.  The 
bill  came  in  friendly  guise.  It  was  the  design  of  its  promoters  that  the 
measure  should  be  a  friend  indeed.  "And,"  said  the  speaker,  with  another 
crushing  blow^  at  Mr.  Horsman,  "there  are  Abdiels  who  will  not  leave  their 
friend.  There  is  one  member  of  the  House  whose  sympathy  with  us  I  feel 
unequal  to  express,  and  would  therefore  for  that  purpose  take  the  liberty  of 
resorting  to  the  words  of  a  bard  of  Erin  : 

*  Come  rest  in  this  bosom,  my  own  stricken  deer, 
Though  the  herd  have  all  fled,  thy  home  is  still  here; 
Here  still  is  a  smile  that  no  cloud  can  o'ercast, 
And  a  hand  and  a  heart  thine  own  to  the  last.'" 

Than  this,  satire  and  wit  could  go  no  further  ! 

Near  the  close  of  the  discussion  Mr.  Cardwell,  the  war  minister,  spoke 
in  favor  of  the  bill,  but  said  in  his  remarks  that  if  there  were  serious  objec- 
tions to  it  these  might  be  removed  by  amendments  when  the  measure 
should  come  before  the  House  in  committee.  This  conciliatory  statement 
was  seized  upon  by  the  opposition  as  an  admission  of  weakness.  It  looked 
to  them  as  though  the  government  was  about  to  recede.  For  four  nights 
the  debate  continued,  and  Mr.  Disraeli  was  reserved  to  conclude  for  the 
opposition.  He  said  that  Mr.  Cardwell's  concession  was  in  the  nature  of  a 
surrender.  That  gentleman  had  held  up  the  white  flag;  but  the  prime  min- 
ister had  not  supported  the  discretion  of  his  lieutenant.  At  the  present 
stage  there  was  no  evidence  that  the  government  would  yield  anything, 
and  he,  the  speaker,  would  be  constrained  to  discuss  the  bill  as  it  had  been 
presented. 


496 


LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E,    GLADSTONE. 


The  first  criticism  of  Mr.  Disraeli  was  that  the  university  which  was 
contemplated  was  7iot  a  university,  for  it  was  not  universal.  The  next  objec- 
tion was  that  the  measure  provided  that  the  theological  facult)'  of  Trinity 
College  should  be  detached  and  handed  over  to  the  Disestablished  Church. 
In  the  next  place,  it  was  proposed  to  exclude  moral  philosophy  and  modern 
history  from  the  curriculum.  This  proposition  must  be  regarded  as  astound- 
ing. The  governing  body,  provision  for  which  was  dimly  outlined,  was  to 
be  contemplated  as  a  despotic  and  anonymous  council.     All  experience  had 


DISRAELI    KNTERTAINING   THE   HOUSE    WITH    A    STORY. 


shown  that  parties  would  spring  up  in  such  a  body,  the  balance  between 
which  would  be  held  by  a  few  "  incapable  trimmers  ;"  and  these  would  really 
be  the  governing  body  of  the  new  Irish  University! 

As  to  the  Roman  Catholics,  the  speaker  was  sorry  for  them,  but  their 
condition  was  the  legitimate  consequence  of  their  own  action.  Mr.  Disraeli 
reverted  to  the  time  when  he,  as  prime  minister,  had  ineffectually  negotiated 
with  the  Catholic  bishops  on  the  subject  of  a  concurrent  endowment.  But 
that  measure  was  now  dead  and  could  not  be  revived.  Mr.  Gladstone  in 
presenting  the  measure  before  the  House  had  followed  his  usual  policy  of 
confiscation.     If  the  Catholics  had  followed  him  at  all  it  had  been  with  a 


DECLINE    OF    THE    REFORMATORY    MOVEMENT.  497 

view,  not  of  obtaining-  university  privileges,  but  of  destroying  a  Protestant 
Church.  The  country  had  had  enough  of  confiscation  already.  There  was 
a  satiety  of  that  kind  of  feeding.  For  his  own  part  he  did  not  wish  to  annoy 
the  prime  minister,  but  he  should  oppose  the  present  bill  because  he 
thought  it  a  measure  at  once  futile,  pernicious,  and  monstrous. 

It  was  now  Mr.  Gladstone's  turn  to  do  what  he  could  to  stay  the  fight 
which  he  perceived  to  be  going  against  the  government.  He  began  by  say- 
ing that  though  Mr.  Disraeli  had  acknowledged  before  the  House  that  the 
project  of  concurrent  endowment  was  a  dead  issue,  yet  his  very  reference  to 
it  showed  that  it  still  survived  in  his  memory,  and,  perhaps,  in  his  affections. 
Did  not  this  imply  that  that  project  might  revive  under  the  magic  touch 
of  the  right  honorable  gentleman.?  Mr.  Gladstone  went  on  to  say  that  he 
was  sorry  that  religious  heat  and  party  spirit  had  obtruded  themselves  in 
the  discussion  of  the  question  before  the  House.  He  would  again  go  over 
the  truisms  of  the  situation.  The  Roman  Catholics  of  Ireland  had  a  real 
grievance,  and  there  was  a  prime  necessity  for  reforming  the  academical 
system  of  that  country.  He  said  that  the  bill  had  been  attended  with 
strange  misfortunes.  Those  who  had  at  first  received  it  with  applause  had 
now  renounced  it.  And  for  what  }  The  present  question  was,  "  Should  the 
House  go  into  committee  on  this  bill.?"  To  refuse  to  do  so  would  be  an 
act  of  future  regret  to  the  authors  of  the  refusal. 

Mr.  Gladstone  next  referred  to  the  argument  that  the  standard  of  edu- 
cation was  to  be  lowered  by  the  method  proposed.  Had  that  been  true  in 
the  creation  of  the  London  University.?  That  institution  w^as  not  an 
instructing,  but  an  examining  body  ;  and  yet  under  its  influence  the  standard 
of  education  had  been  advanced.  It  was  objected  that  the  people  of  Ireland 
were  opposed  to  the  pending  measure.  For  his  part  he  was  sure  that  this 
opposition  had  been  fanned  and  exaggerated.  Besides,  it  was  not  the  busi- 
ness of  the  House  of  Commons  to  decline  to  go  into  committee  on  a  bill 
because  it  was  opposed,  even- by  some  of  those  to  whom  its  benefits  were 
directed.  It  was  very  proper,  as  Mr.  Card  well  had  suggested,  that  the  pro- 
visions of  the  bill  should  be  fully  discussed  in  committee  ;  but  the  govern- 
ment did  not  concede  that  that  involved  a  surrender  of  any  of  the  principles 
essential  to  the  measure. 

If  amendments  should  appear  to  be  of  real  advantage  they  would  be 
welcome,  and,  if  not,  they  would  be  rejected.  Mr.  Gladstone  wished  the 
House  to  bear  in  mind  the  bottom  assumption  from  which  the  bill  had  been 
evolved,  and  that  was  that  the  religious  grievances  admitted  to  exist  among 
the  Irish  people  should  be  removed  by  opening  degrees  to  that  people 
under  the  administration  of  men  of  all  opinions,  impartial  and  unsectarian. 
Another  principle  was  that  Trinity  College  should  be  reduced  to  its  proper 
functions,  and  this  included  the  separation  of  the  faculty  of  theology  there- 


498  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

from.  These  evils  could  not  be  met  and  would  not  be  met  by  the  policy  of 
concurrent  endowments.  The  system  of  introducing  separate  endowments 
for  separate  academical  institutions  of  different  religious  control  in  Ireland 
would  not  and  could  not  prevail.  In  this  measure  there  should  be  a  con- 
currence of  Catholics  and  Protestants.  The  present  momentary  union  of 
the  former  with  the  Conservatives  ought  to  be  dissolved. 

Moreover,  what  would  be  the  policy  in  case  the  present  bill  should  be 
rejected.?  What  was  to  be  the  polic)'  adopted  instead  for  Ireland.?  "  Per- 
haps," said  the  prime  minister,  "  the  bill  of  my  honorable  friend,  the  member 
for  Brighton,  will  find  favor  which  leaves  the  University  of  Dublin  in  the 
hands  of  Trinity  College,  and  which,  I  presume,  if  passed,  will  only  be  the 
harbineer  of  an  agitation  fiercer  still  than  that  which  we  are  told  would  fol- 
low  the  passage  of  the  present  bill.  It  will  still  leave  the  Roman  Catholic 
in  this  condition,  that  he  will  not  be  able  to  obtain  a  degree  in  Ireland  with- 
out going  either  to  the  Queen's  College,  to  which  he  objects,  or  placing  him- 
self under  examinations  and  a  system  of  discipline  managed  and  conducted 
by  a  Protestant  board — a  board  composed  of  eight  gentlemen,  of  whom  six 
are  clergymen  of  the  Disestablished  Church  of  Ireland.  The  other  alterna- 
tive will  be  the  adopting  for  Ireland  of  a  new  set  of  principles,  which  Par- 
liament has  repudiated  in  Ireland  and  has  disclaimed  for  Great  Britain,  not 
only  treating  the  Roman  Catholic  majority  in  Ireland  as  being  the  Irish 
nation,  but  likewise  adopting  for  that  Irish  nation  the  principles  which  we 
have  ourselves  overthrown  even  within  the  limits  of  our  own  creneration. 

"  I  know  not  with  what  satisfaction  we  can  look  forward  to  these  pros- 
pects. It  is  dangerous  to  tamper  with  objects  of  this  kind.  We  have  pre- 
sented to  you  our  plan,  for  which  we  are  responsible.  W^e  are  not  afraid,  I 
am  not  afraid,  of  the  charge  of  my  right  honorable  friend  that  we  have 
served  the  priests.  [Mr.  Horsman  :  '  I  did  not  say  so.']  I  am  glad  to  hear 
it.  I  am  ready  to  serve  the  priests  or  any  other  man  as  far  as  justice  dic- 
tates. I  am  not  ready  to  go  an  inch  farther  for  them  or  for  any  other  man  ; 
and  if  the  labors  of  1869  and  1870  are  to  be  forgotten  in  Ireland — if  where 
we  have  earnestly  sought  and  toiled  for  peace  we  find  only  contention  ;  if 
our  tenders  of  relief  are  thrust  aside  with  scorn — let  us  still  remember  that 
there  is  a  voice  which  is  not  heard  in  the  cracklinof  of  the  fire  or  in  the 
roaring  of  whirlwind  or  the  storm,  but  which  will  and  must  be  heard  when 
they  had  passed  away — the  still  small  voice  of  justice. 

"  To  mete  out  justice  to  Ireland,  according  to  the  best  view  that  with 
human  infirmity  we  could  form,  has  been  the  work,  I  will  almost  say  the 
sacred  work,  of  this  Parliament.  Having  put  our  hand  to  the  plow  let  us 
not  turn  back.  Let  not  what  we  think  the  fault  or  perverseness  of  those 
whom  we  are  attempting  to  assist  have  the  slightest  effect  in  turning  us 
even  by  a  hair's  breadth  from  the  path  on  which  we  have  entered.     As  we 


DECLINE    OF    THE    REFORMATORY    MOVEMENT,  499 

have  begun,  so  let  us  persevere  even  to  the  end,  and  with  firm  and  resolute 
hand  let  us  efface  from  the  law  and  the  practice  of  the  country  the  last — for 
I  believe  it  is  the  last — of  the  religious  and  social  grievances  of  Ireland." 

The  end  of  the  debate  brought  matters  to  the  crisis  of  a  vote.  The 
government  were  confident  of  a  majority,  but  did  not  reckon  the  majority  at 
a  large  figure.  The  Conservatives  rallied  all  their  forces,  and  the  result 
showed  in  their  favor.  The  bill  was  rejected  by  a  majority  of  three.  Fort\'- 
five  of  the  Liberal  members  voted  against  the  measure,  of  whom  thirty-five 
were  Irish  members.  While  the  result  could  not  be  regarded  as  a  thunder- 
clap from  a  clear  s'ky  it  was  nevertheless  fatally  indicative  of  the  end  of  the 
Liberal  administration.  No  government  in  Great  Britain  can  longf  survive 
such  a  verdict  of  the  House  of  Commons  on  an  essential  question.  Mr. 
Gladstone  at  once  offered  to  the  queen  his  resignation  as  prime  minister, 
recommending  her  majesty,  as  was  customary,  to  call  the  leader  of  the 
opposition.  This  was  done;  but  Mr.  Disraeli  unconditionally  refused  to 
accept  the  responsibility.  He  had  organized  and  directed  the  movement 
which  led  to  the  overthrow  of  the  government ;  but  his  forces  were  made 
up  of  scattered  cohorts,  agreeing  in  one  thing  only,  namely,  the  desire  to 
humiliate  the  extant  ministry. 

Mr.  Disraeli  showed  the  queen  that  he  could  not  successfully  organize 
a  new  Conservative  government  with  the  forces  at  his  command.  They 
were  not  sufficient.  For  this  reason  her  majesty  invited  Mr.  Gladstone  and 
the  cabinet  as  a  whole  to  remain  in  office,  which  he  agreed  at  least  for  a 
time  to  do.  These  matters  were  explained  by  the  prime  minister  and  by 
Mr.  Disraeli  in  the  House  of  Commons.  Both  gentlemen  read  extracts 
from  the  letters  which  they  had  written  on  the  subject  to  the  queen.  It 
appeared  that  her  majesty  had  offered  to  appoint  Mr.  Disraeli  with  the  priv- 
ilege of  dissolving  Parliament  and  appealing  to  the  country;  but  that  astute 
politician  had  declined  to  adopt  this  policy  on  the  ground  that  there  was  at 
that  time  no  question  of  sufficient  moment  upon  which  to  arouse  the  senti- 
ment of  the  country  and  thereby  obtain  a  sufficient  Conservative  majority. 

The  situation  that  ensued  was  an  interregnum.  A  modicum  of  leijisla- 
tion  w^as  effected  durincr  the  remainder  of  the  session.  Lord  Selborne,  the 
chancellor,  succeeded  in  securing  the  passage  of  the  Judicature  Bill,  a 
measure  of  considerable  importance  to  the  administration  of  justice.  Mr. 
Forster  had  an  amendment  adopted  to  his  Education  Bill,  by  which  the 
question  of  paying  the  school  charges  of  indigent  children  was  referred  to 
the  guardians  of  the  poor,  instead  of  to  the  school  boards,  as  hitherto.  Mr. 
Lowe,  chancellor  of  the  exchequer,  brought  in  a  bill  on  the  subject  of  local 
taxation,  which,  though  supported  by  Mr.  Gladstone,  was  defeated,  and  this 
led  to  the  resignation  of  Mr.  Low^e  from  office. 

Mr.  Fawcett,  who  had  opposed  the  Irish  University  Bill,  now  presented 


500  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

a  simple  measure  of  his  own  for  abolishing  the  religious  tests  for  admission 
of  students  to  Dublin  University,  and  this  proposition  was  carried.  The 
Radical,  Mr.  Miall,  offered  a  resolution  for  the  abolition  of  the  English 
Church,  that  is,  the  Church  in  England,  and  secured  for  it  sixty-one  votes. 
This  was  about  the  measure  of  the  Radical  strength  in  Parliament  at  that 
time.  To  all  this  was  added  a  successful  proposition  of  the  decaying  gov- 
ernment that  the  usual  grant  be  made  as  a  marriage  portion  to  the  Duke  of 
Edinburgh,  who  was  about  to  take  for  his  wife  the  Grand  Duchess  Marie 
Alexandrovna  of  Russia.  Thus,  through  vicissitude  and  decline,  the  parlia- 
mentary session  of  iSj^  came  to  an  end. 

It  was  now  manifested  in  no  uncertain  way  that  a  strong  political  reac- 
tion was  on  in  Great  Britain.  The  country  had  tired  of  reform.  It  appeared 
that  the  great  reformatory  movement  had  dwindled  to  a  slender  thread  of 
influence,  that  might  be  cut  at  any  moment.  The  confidence  of  the  Con- 
servatives rose,  and  although  the  Liberals  presented  a  bold  front  the  tide 
was  against  them.  The  leaders  of  the  opposition  adopted  the  policy  of 
taunting  the  government  with  the  assertion  that  it  was  utterly  discredited 
before  the  country,  that  its  own  party  support  had  fallen  away,  and  that 
the  prime  minister  did  not  dare  to  appeal  to  the  nation. 

This  was  precisely  what  he  durst  do,  and  did  do,  with  promptitude,  at 
the  beginning  of  1874.  On  the  23d  of  January  of  that  year  he  sent  his 
manifesto  to  the  electors  at  Greenwich,  saying  that  Parliament  was  dissolved, 
and  that  a  new  body  should  be  chosen  in  its  place.  This  proclamation  pro- 
duced orreat  excitement.  It  was  a  matter  of  no  small  moment  to  extinguish 
a  government  which  beginning  six  years  previously  had  accomplished  so 
great  a  transformation  in  Great  Britain.  There  was  the  disestablishment  of 
the  Irish  Church.  There  also  was  the  passage  of  the  Irish  Land  Bill.  There 
also  was  the  great  Act  for  the  Abolition  of  Purchase,  and  for  the  Reorgan- 
ization of  the  Army.  There  was  Mr.  Forster's  Elementary  Educational  Bill. 
There  was  the  Ballot  Bill,  and  there  was  710^  the  Irish  University  Bill.  It 
might  well  seem  that  the  record  would  suffice,  and  that  the  verdict  of  the 
country  would  be  in  favor  of  a  government  that  had  accomplished  so  much 
in  the  way  of  reform. 

Perhaps  it  had  accomplished  too  much  ;  that  is,  too  much  according  to 
the  estimation  of  Great  Britain.  At  any  rate  the  nation  had  concluded  to 
pause.  Mr.  Gladstone  in  his  manifesto  said  :  "  In  the  month  of  March  last 
the  government  were  defeated  in  their  effort  to  settle  upon  just  and  enlarged 
principles  the  long-disputed  question  of  the  higher  education  in  Ireland,  if 
not  by  a  combined,  yet  concurrent  effort  of  the  leader  of  the  opposition  and 
of  the  Roman  Catholic  prelacy  of  Ireland.  Upon  suffering  this  defeat  the 
government,  according  to  the  justice  of  our  Constitution,  placed  their  resig- 
nation in  the  hands   of  the  sovereign.      Her  majesty,  in   the  just  and  wise 


DECLINE    OF    THE    REFORMATORY    MOVEMENT.  5OI 

exercise  of  her  high  office,  appHed  to  the  leader  of  the  opposition.  He, 
however,  declarinj^  that  he  was  not  prepared  with  a  pohcy  and  could  not 
govern  in  the  existing  Parliament,  declined  to  fill  the  void  which  he  had 
made.  Under  these  circumstances  we  thought  ourselves  bound  by  loyalty 
to  the  queen  not  to  decline  the  resumption  of  our  offices. 

"  But  this  step  we  took  with  an  avowed  reluctance.  We  felt  that,  in 
consequence  of  what  had  happened,  both  the  crown  and  country  were 
placed  at  a  disadvantage,  as  it  was  established  that  during  the  existence 
of  the  present  Parliament  one  party  only  could  govern,  and  must  therefore 
govern  without  appeal.  We  also  felt  that  a  precedent  had  been  set  which 
both  diminished  our  strenoth  and  weakened  the  oreneral  ei-iarantees  for  the 
responsibility  and  integrity  of  parliamentary  opposition.  Of  this  diminution 
of  strength  we  were  painfully  and  sensibly  reminded  during  the  session  by 
the  summary  and  rapid  dismissal,  in  the  House  of  Lords,  of  measures  which 
had  cost  much  time  and  labor  to  the  House  of  Commons.  But  we  remem- 
bered that  in  the  years  1868  and  1S70,  when  the  mind  of  the  country  was 
unambiguously  expressed,  the  House  of  Lords  had,  much  to  its  honor, 
deferred  to  that  expression  upon  matters  of  great  moment ;  and  I  cannot 
doubt  that  it  would  have  continued  in  this  course  had  the  isolated  and  less 
certain,  but  still  frequent  and  fresh  indications  of  public  opinion  at  single 
elections  continued  to  be  in  harmony  with  the  powerful  and  authentic,  but 
now  more  remote  judgment  of  1868." 

Mr.  Gladstone  continued  at  great  length  to  show  and  to  justify  the 
policy  of  the  Liberal  part}^  and  to  discredit  the  policy  of  the  Tories.  He 
also  foreshadowed  conditions  that  might  be  expected  in  case  the  former 
should  be  continued  in  power.  He  hinted  at  relief  from  taxation,  and  in 
particular  at  the  extinction  of  the  income  tax.  He  advocated  economy.  He 
declared  that  the  policy  of  the  government  since  the  accession  to  power  of 
the  Liberal  party  was  now  on  trial  before  the  country.  That  policy  involved 
the  financial  and  commercial  legislation  of  Great  Britain  as  far  back  as  1842. 
He  disclaimed  all  intention  on  the  part  of  the  Liberal  government  to  worry 
the  country  or  imperil  its  institutions.  It  was  not  true  that  the  country 
had  been  harried  by  the  existing  administration  or  that  any  essential  Interest 
had  been  endangered. 

It  was  now  the  duty  of  the  nation,  continued  Mr.  Gladstone,  to  pass 
judgment  on  both  men  and  principles.  "  I  am  confident,"  said  he,  "  that  if 
the  present  government  be  dismissed  from  the  service  of  their  gracious 
mistress  and  of  the  country  the  Liberal  party  which  they  represent  may  at 
least  challenge  contradiction  when  they  say  that  their  term  of  forty  years 
leaves  the  throne,  the  laws,  and  the  institutions  of  the  country,  not  weaker, 
but  stronger  than  it  found  them.  Such,  gentlemen,  is  the  issue  placed  before 
you  and  before  the  nation  for  your  decision.      If  the  trust  of  this  adminis- 


502 


LIFE    AND    TIMES    UE    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 


tration  be  by  the  effect  of  the  present  elections  virtually  renewed,  I,  for 
one,  will  serve  you,  for  what  remains  of  my  time,  faithfully;  if  the  confi- 
dence of  the  country  be  taken  from  us  and  handed  over  to  others  whom 
you  may  judge  more  worthy,  I,  for  one,  shall  accept  cheerfully  my  dis- 
missal." 

To  this  effective  pronunciamento  Mr.  Disraeli  appeared  with  a  counter 
address  to  the  electors  of  Buckinghamshire.  This  paper  also  was  marked 
with  much  ability  and  with  the  usual  wit.  Of  the  recent  dissolution  of  Par- 
liament he  said  :  "  Whether  this  step  has  been  taken  as  a  means  of  avoiding 


INCIDENT   OF  GLADSTONE  S   CAMPAIGNING. 


the  humbling  confession  by  the  prime  minister  that  he  has,  in  a  fresh  viola- 
tion of  constitutional  law,  persisted  in  retaining  for  several  months  a  seat 
to  which  he  was  no  longer  entitled,  or  has  been  resorted  to  by  his  govern- 
ment in  order  to  postpone  or  evade  the  day  of"  reckoning  for  a  war  carried 
on  without  communication  with  Parliament,  and  the  expenditure  for  which 
Parliament  has  not  sanctioned,  it  is  unnecessary  to  consider."  Such  was  the 
tone  of  Mr.  Disraeli's  manifesto  at  the  beginning,  and  the  remainder  was  in 
similar  .vein.  Nor  need  we  in  this  connection  summarize  the  various 
charges  which  the  leader  of  the  opposition  brought  against  the  Liberal 
government,  or  the  subtile  reasons  which  he  gave  why  the  administration 
should  be  transferred  to  the  Conservatives.  The  issue  was  joined  between 
the  two  great  leaders,  and  the  decision  was  remanded  to  the  country. 


DECLINE    OF    THE    REFORMATORY    MOVEMENT.  503 

On  the  26th  of  January,  1874,  Parliament  was  dissolved.  The  new 
House  was  called  to  meet  on  the  5th  of  March.  The  political  canvass  was 
Opened  hotly  by  both  parties.  At  every  corner  the  Liberals  were  met  with 
opposition,  and  in  many  places  it  was  unexpected.  The  Nonconformist  fac- 
tion required  of  their  candidates  a  pledge  against  the  whole  policy  of  denom- 
inational support  for  schools,  or  rather  of  public  support  in  any  forrii  for 
denominational  institutions.  This  was  a  blow  at  the  theory  of  the  Episcopal 
Establishment. 

As  for  Mr.  Gladstone,  he  went  courageously  into  the  campaign.  Two 
days  after  the  dissolution  he  appeared  before  his  constituents  at  Black- 
heath.  There  he  answered  the  recent  address  of  Mr.  Disraeli  and  defended 
the  policy  of  the  government.  He  charged  that  the  opposition  were  trying 
to  divert  the  attention  of  the  people  from  domestic  concerns  and  policies  of 
great  importance  to  foreign  trivialities.  Mr.  Disraeli  was  fixing  his  atten- 
tion on  the  Straits  of  Malacca,  and  raising  an  issue  as  to  the  breadth  of 
those  straits,  and  neglecting  the  great  concerns  of  the  British  nation.  It 
was  much  more  important  to  attend  to  the  affairs  of  Ireland  and  to  remove 
the  scandals  from  British  administration  in  that  country  than  to  be  hunting 
the  world  over  for  small  interests  and  disputed  trifles  in  foreign  lands.  It 
was  the  policy  of  the  Liberal  party  to  relieve  the  people  of  their  burdens, 
and  in  particular  to  extinguish  the  income  tax  ;  but  Mr.  Disraeli,  according 
to  recent  declarations,  was  willing  that  the  income  tax  should  under  certain 
conditions  be  continued. 

The  canvass  of  1874  was  conducted  with  great  ability,  but  the  tides  set 
in  the  other  way,  and  the  Liberals  were  overwhelmed.  The  result  was  a 
disaster.  Of  the  six  hundred  and  fiftyrtwo  members  of  the  House  of  Com- 
mons to  be  returned  the  Conservatives  elected  three  hundred  and  forty- 
nine,  and  the  Liberals  three  hundred  and  three.  This  was  a  gain  to  the 
former  of  fifty-six  seats — a  sufficient  increment  to  throw  the  majority  strongly 
against  the  recent  orovernment.  Mr,  Gladstone  himself  was  well-nigh  dis- 
charged  from  service  by  his  Greenwich  constituents.  The  workmen  of  the 
dockyards,  the  farmers,  and  the  Church  following  were  all  combined  for  the 
overthrow  of  the  prime  minister  and  for  the  installation  in  his  place  of  Mr. 
Disraeli.  Mr.  Gladstone  of  course  accepted  the  verdict.  He  at  once  resigned 
his  office,  and  after  a  service  of  six  years  fell  back  to  the  place  of  leader  of 
the  opposition.  The  first  great  ascendency  of  the  Liberal  party  was  at  an 
end,  and  the  foremost  man  of  that  great  division  of  the  British  public  retired 
to  the  ranks. 


504 


LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E,    GLADSTONE. 


4 


CHAPTER    XXV. 

Out  of  Office. 

HE  precedincT  chapters  have  been  greatly  extended  because  they 
cover  one  of  the  most  remarkable  periods  in  the  life  and  work 
of  William  E.  Gladstone.  Not  that  other  parts  are  of  minor 
importance,  but  that  the  epoch  of  the  first  Liberal  ascendency 
is  of  prime  importance  may  be  assigned  as  the  reason  for  de- 
voting relatively  a  smaller  space  to  the  period  upon  which  we  now  enter. 
That  period  considers  Mr.  Gladstone  in  retirement,  of  half-retirement,  from 
his  active  duties  in  the  House  of  Commons. 

Mr.  Disraeli  was  now  for  the  first  time  in  unequivocal  conduct  of  the 
government.  He  had  a  clear  Conservative  majority  in  his  support.  The 
House  and  the  whole  nation  had  become  accustomed  to  his  manners  and 
methods.  Certainly  England  and  all  the  world  were  now  acquainted  with 
his  abilities.  With  little  reserve  we  may  regard  him  intellectually  as  the 
most  brilliant  Prime  Minister  of  Great  Britain,  but  his  other  powers  were  not 
equal  to  his  intellect.  He  prevailed  by  force  of  mind,  by  wit,  by  long-head- 
edness,  sometimes  by  subtlety.  There  was  in  his  constitution  the  capacity 
of  a  fox — a  great  fox,  but  nevertheless  a  fox.  That  he  was  a  true  English- 
man none  can  any  longer  doubt.  That  he  had  confirmed  his  reputation  with 
the  aristocracy  of  Great  Britain  and  with  the  reigning  house  cannot  be 
doubted. 

It  is  always  difficult  and  critical  to  begin.  In  fact,  there  was  not  at  this 
juncture  much  to  begin  with.  The  Conservative  victory  hardly  implied 
action,  but  rather  rest  from  action.  As  for  Mr.  Gladstone,  though  he  gave 
no  sign,  he  must  have  felt  deeply  the  late  reverse.  That  political  disaster 
had  come  by  the  defection  of  his  friends.  The  solidarity  of  the  Liberal 
party  had  been  broken.  Some  of  the  leaders  had  gone  over  to  the  enemy. 
There  was  much  ribald  jesting  about  Mr.  Gladstone's  downfall.  As  for  the 
Liberal  party,  the  situation  was  quite  serious.  It  was  virtually  without  a 
leader.  Mr.  Gladstone  wished  to  retire.  Nor  may  we  suppose  that  this 
desire  was  the  result  of  personal  considerations.  In  the  interval  between 
the  late  election  and  the  assembling  of  Parliament  he  had  expressed  his 
wishes  in  a  letter  to  Lord  Granville,  stating  that  he  had  sent  to  the  members 
of  Parliament  a  circular  bearing  upon  such  matters  as, related  to  the  opening 
of  the  parliamentary  session.  He  said  that,  while  regarding  it  as  his  duty  to 
do  this,  he  had  not  expressed  in  the  circular  what  was  personal  to  himself 
or  defined  his  individual  position. 

Then  Mr.  Gladstone  went  on  to  say  :  "  For  a  variety  of  reasons  personal 
to  myself  I  could  not  contemplate  any  unlimited  extension  of  active  political 


OUT    OF    OFFICE.  505 

service,  and  I  am  anxious  that  it  should  be  clearly  understood  by  those 
friends  with  whom  I  have  acted  in  the  direction  of  affairs  that  at  my  age  I 
must  reserve  my  entire  freedom  to  divest  myself  of  all  the  responsibilities  of 
leadership  at  no  distant  time.  The  need  of  rest  will  prevent  me  from  giving 
more  than  an  occasional  attendance  in  the  House  of  Commons  durine-the 
present  session. 

"  I  should  be  desirous,  shortly  before  the  commencement  of  the  session 
of  1875,  to  consider  whether  there  would  be  advantage  in  placing  my  serv- 
ices for  a  time  at  the  disposal  of  the  Liberal  party  or  w^hether  I  should  then 
claim  exemption  from  the  duties  I  have  hitherto  discharged.  If,  however, 
there  should  be  reasonable  ground  for  believing-  that,  instead  of  the  course 
which  I  have  sketched,  it  would  be  preferable,  in  the  view^  of  the  party  gen- 
erally, for  me  to  assume  at  once  the  place  of  an  independent  member,  I 
should  willingly  adopt  the  latter  alternative.  But  I  shall  retain  all  that  de- 
sire I  have  hitherto  felt  for  the  welfare  of  the  party,  and  if  the  gentlemen 
composing  it  should  think  fit  either  to  choose  a  leader  or  make  provision  ad 
interim,  with  a  view  to  the  convenience  of  the  present  year,  the  person  des- 
ignated would  of  course  command  from  me  any  assistance  which  he  might 
find  occasion  to  seek  and  which  it  might  be  in  my  power  to  render." 

The  views  of  the  great  leader  as  outlined  in  this  letter  were  accepted 
by  his  following  rather  because  he  wished  it  so  than  from  preference. 
There  was  thus  a  quasi-Liberal  leadership  at  the  ensuing  session  of  Parlia- 
ment. Mr.  Gladstone  w^as  frequently  absent  from  the  House,  and  this  fact 
gave  opportunity  to  the  victorious  Conservatives  for  much  satirical  comment 
about  the  condition  of  her  majesty's  opposition.  The  situation  was  not 
pleasing  to  Mr.  Disraeli,  who  knew  well  enough  that  the  strong  bracing  of 
a  well-organized  and  well-led  opposition  is  one  of  the  essentials  of  brilliant 
and  successful  government  in  Great  Britain.  He  wanted  his  rival  to  be 
always  in  his  place.  Perhaps  he  recognized  the  fact  that  his  own  powers 
were  brought  into  the  highest  efficiency  by  that  kind  of  political  antagonism 
by  which  he  had  so  long  been  trained. 

The  first  event  of  a  new  Parliament  is  the  address  from  the  throne  and 
the  formal  debate  thereon.  On  the  occasion  of  the  opening  of  the  session 
of  1874  Mr.  Gladstone  appeared  and  spoke  to  the  address.  In  doing  so  he 
offered  a  justification  of  the  late  government  in  dissolving  Parliament  and 
appealing  to  the  country  while  that  government  still  held  a  nominal  majority 
in  the  House.  Mr.  Gladstone  said  that  the  majority  ought  to  be  unequiv- 
ocal. It  was  his  duty  to  know  whether  the  country  would  make  it  so.  The 
question  had  been  submitted,  and  the  majority  had  declared  for  the  other 
side.  A  new  government  had  thus  been  constituted,  and  that  government 
in  its  turn  was  entitled  to  a  fair  opportunity  for  carrying  its  principles  into 
action.      It  was  because  he  deemed  it  right  for  the  country  to  decide  upon 


5o6  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    (GLADSTONE. 

the  question  of  the  correctness  of  the  poHcy  of  the  late  government  that 
he  had  declared  a  dissolution. 

It  now  appeared  that  though  the  Conservatives  were  completely  vic- 
torious they  had  little  to  do.  There  was  certainly  no  further  progress  to 
be  promoted.  If  anything  should  be  done  it  must  be  simply  in  a  confirma- 
tory, or  possibly  a  reactionary,  way.  One  member,  a  certain  Mr.  Smollett, 
sought  to  produce  the  requisite  parliamentary  heat  by  offering  a  resolution 
of  censure  on  Mr.  Gladstone  for  having  dissolved  the  late  Parliament.  This 
motion  was  not  supported  by  the  government,  and  Mr.  Gladstone  himself 
waved  it  aside  without  effort.  Meanwhile,  among  the  first  facts  revealed  was 
this,  that  the  disputed  figures  of  Mr.  Gladstone  relative  to  revenue  and  sur- 
plus, presented  to  the  House  about  a  year  pi'eviously,  were  now  shown  to  be 
correct.  According  to  these  figures  the  Conservative  government  found 
itself  at  the  very  outset  in  the  possession  of  the  almost  uncomfortable  sur- 
plus of  five  and  a  half  million  pounds. 

Now  it  was  that  Conservatism  must  try  its  hand  at  some  mild-man- 
nered legislation  on  the  religious,  or  rather  ecclesiastical,  question.  The 
House  of  Lords  began  to  stir,  and  in  that  body  a  bill  was  brought  forward 
by  the  Duke  of  Richmond  relative  to  the  Church  patronage  in  Scotland. 
In  that  country  the  Established  Kirk  was  supported  by  a  system  of  lay  pat- 
ronage, and  it  was  the  purpose  of  the  Duke  of  Richmond's  bill  to  change 
the  lay  system  for  another,  to  be  controlled  by  the  congregation.  The 
terms  of  the  bill  were  such  as  to  abolish  all  Church  patronage,  from  that  of 
the  crown  to  that  of  the  laity,  and  at  the  same  time  to  create  an  ecclesiastical 
or  kirk  constituency,  having  the  prerogative  of  selecting  ministers,  etc. 
The  patronage  was  to  rest  henceforth  with  the  male  communicants,  and 
those  who  were  to  be  legislated  out  of  their  rights  were  to  receive  compen- 
sation therefor. 

It  was  a  mild-mannered  and  easy-going  sort  of  reform  in  which 
there  was  as  little  virtue  as  danger.  There  was,  however,  some  opposition 
to  the  measure,  and  Mr.  Gladstone  spoke  against  it.  He  expressed  his 
regrets  at  having  to  enter  upon  the  discussion  of  a  subject  in  ecclesias- 
tical controversy.  He  reviewed  the  measure  before  the  House,  and  also 
an  amendment  proposed  declaring  it  inexpedient  to  legislate  without 
further  inquiry  on  the  subject  of  patronage  in  the  Church  of  Scotland. 
Mr.  Gladstone  wished  to  know  what  the  government  was  going  to  do  for 
that  numerous  class  that  had  been  driven  out  of  the  Established  Kirk. 
Such  people  had  been  obliged  to  organize  for  themselves  and  to  support 
their  own  Church  system  without  aid.  Was  it  the  intention  of  the  bill 
to  return  such  Scotch  Dissenters  to  the  Church  from  the  privileges  of 
which  they  had  been  excluded.?  If  so,  he  had  nothing  further  to  say; 
but  the  bill   in   its   present    aspect    was    not    fair,    and    was    not    generous. 


OUT    OF    OFFICE.  507 

Besides,  there  had  not  been  in  Scotland,  as  there  had  been  in  Ireland,  a  cry 
for  disestablishment. 

The  presentation  of  the  bill,  said  the  speaker,  had  forerun  any  demand 
for  it.  Nevertheless,  since  the  bill  had  been  prepared  a  demand  had  sprung 
up  for  disestablishment.  An  immense  majority  of  the  Scots  had  in  the 
General  Assembly  declared  in  favor  of  such  a  policy.  -The  speaker  did  not 
wish  to  be  responsible  for  raising  the  question  of  disestablishment  in 
Scotland.  Then  the  speaker  added,  "  I  am  not  an  idolater  of  establish- 
ments " — a  remark  which  created  much  excitement  and  cheering  in  the 
House.  Then  the  speaker  continued  to  the  effect  that  he  did  not  wish  to 
raise  a  controversy  on  the  subject  of  disestablishments  unless  there  should  be 
the  strongest  justifying  circumstances.  "If  the  cheer,"  said  he,  "  we  have 
just  heard — and  it  was,  perhaps,  a  very  fair,  natural,  and  legitimate  cheer — 
was  intended  to  imply  that  I  am  a  great  enemy  of  establishment  because  I 
used  every  effort  in  my  power  to  put  an  end  to  an  establishment  in  Ireland, 
I  must  say,  in  answer  to  that  cheer,  that  I  do  not  repent  the  part  I  took. 
So  far  from  repenting  it,  if  I  am  to  have  a  character  with  posterity  at  all — 
supposing  posterity  is  ever  to  know  that  such  a  person  as  myself  existed  in 
this  country — I  am  perfectly  willing  that  my  character  should  be  tried 
simply  and  solely  by  the  proceedings  to  which  I  was  a  party  with  regard  to 
the  Irish  Church  Establishment. 

"  I  would,  however,"  said  Mr.  Gladstone,  "in  this  case  recognize  distinc- 
tions that  are  founded  in  the  nature  of  thinos.  In  Scotland  there  has  been 
no  general  movement  of  principle  toward  disestablishment  ;  and  although 
an  Established  Church  in  a  minority  is  an  anomaly,  it  is  an  anomaly  which 
I  was  well  content  to  tolerate,  and  which  the  masses  of  the  people  of  Scot- 
land were  justly  and  wisely  prepared  to  tolerate,  and  not  to  be  guided  by 
abstract  principles,  but  by  a  careful  regard  to  the  state  of  facts.  But  when 
in  that  state  of  things  the  government  throws  down  the  challenge  before 
them  ;  proposes  to  invest  this  ecclesiastical  body,  or  even  the  committee  or 
commission  of  it,  with  powers  never  before  intrusted  to  an  ecclesiastical 
body,  but  which  will  infallibly  be  quoted  in  support  of  high  clerical  preten- 
sions in  other  quarters  ;  and  when  in  doing  that  it  does  it,  as  the  right  hon- 
orable and  learned  lord  says,  in  the  sense  of  strengthening  the  Established 
Church,  but  declining  to  recognize,  for  every  practical  purpose,  the  existence 
of  those  great  Presbyterian  communities  whom  you  drove  out  and  com- 
pelled to  become  Dissenters,  entirely  declining  to  recognize  them,  except  as 
bodies  from  whom  you  make  a  certain  profit  by  withdrawing  one  adherent 
from  them  here,  and  another  from  them  there — that  is  a  challenge,  I  think,  to 
them  to  take  up  a  question  of  the  public  and  national  endowment  of  religion 
such  as  was  never  before  issued  by  a  government  under  any  circumstances, 
and  such   as,  in   my   opinion,  it  is   totally   inconsistent  with   prudence   and 


508  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    £.    GLADSTONE. 

wisdom  to  is^ue.  If  we  have  been  rash — which  I  do  not  admit — our  rash- 
ness will  certainly  fade  into  utter  insignificance  by  the  side  of  the  gratuitous 
hardihood  of  the  government,  which,  as  it  appears  to  me,  determines  to 
initiate  a  religious  war  in  Scotland  under  the  influence  of  the  best  motives, 
but  under  circumstances  the  most  slippery  and  dangerous." 

Notwithstanding  this  able  speech  it  could  but  be  evident  that  the  Duke 
of  Richmond's  bill  would  be  passed.  It  was  a  government  measure,  and  no 
power  at  that  juncture  could  prevail  against  it.  Indeed,  Mr.  Gladstone  was 
able  to  command  only  one  hundred  and  nine  votes  in  his  favor.  The  prime 
minister  did  not  deem  it  important  to  debate  the  question  with  his  antag- 
onist, but  contented  himself  wnth  saying  something  of  a  flattering  character 
about  Mr.  Gladstone's  reappearance  in  the  House,  w"ith  the  expression  of  a 
hojje  that  he  might  be  often  there,  to  aid  with  his  presence  and  influence 
the  proper  balance  of  her  majesty's  government. 

It  might  be  noted  at  this  time  that  the  lords  of  the  upper  House  were 
unusually  active.  The  Conservative  triumph  was  for  them  a  matter  of  great 
encouragement.  Even  our  lords  the  bishops  arose  from  the  fog  and  pro- 
posed something.  He  of  Canterbury  brought  forward  a  bill  for  the  Regula- 
tion of  Public  Worship.  What  was  proposed  is  difficult  of  apprehension  by 
the  American  reader.  In  a  country  and  among  a  people  where  worship  is 
supposed  to  be  a  matter  of  heart  and  sentiment,  and  not  a  thing  of  form,  it 
may  not  be  easily  apprehended  in  what  sense  a  government  may  enact  a  law 
for  the  regulation  of  that  which  in  the  nature  of  the  case  is  not  subject  to 
statutory  regulation. 

The  bill  of  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury  provided  that  a  directory 
power  over  the  forms  of  worship  should  be  given  to  the  bishop  of  the  dio- 
cese, in  order  that  he  micrht  enforce  the  ritual  according-  to  the  canon  and 
prayer  book  of  the  English  Church.  It  was  alleged  at  this  time  that  the 
people  of  England,  though  belonging  to  the  Establishment,  had  departed 
scandalously  in  this  direction  and  in  that  from  the  exact  forms  of  the  ritual. 
The  departure  had  been  in  both  directions.  On  the  one  side  there  was  a  move- 
ment toward  the  simple  methods  of  worship  in  use  among  the  Evangelicals. 
On  the  other  side  there  was  an  approximation  to  the  splendor  and  formality 
of  Rome.  A  good  deal  of  local  Ireedom  in  these  matters  had  supervened, 
and  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury  introduced  his  measure  in  order  to  estab- 
lish conformity  and  against  that  principle  of  Frederick  the  Great,  whose  fun- 
damental notion  was  that  in  /u's  kingdom  every  man  should  be  saved  as  he 
pleased  !  The  bill  proposed  provided  for  the  organization  of  a  board  of 
assessors  with  the  bishop  for  president.  When  any  grievance  existed  respect- 
ing the  forms  of  worship  a  parishioner  might  report  the  same  with  complaint 
to  the  bishop,  and  the  latter  might,  at  his  option,  call  together  his  board  and 
submit  the  matter  to  them.     The  bottom    idea  of  it  was,  however,  that  the 


OUT    OF    OFFICK.  509 

bishop  himself  should  have  the  right  of  holding  the  forms  of  public  worship 
strictly  to  the  canon  and  the  prayer  book. 

This  measure  came  down  in  an  amended  form  to  the  House  of  Com- 
mons, and  Mr.  Gladstone  made  a  speech  thereon  which  was  said  to  have 
moved  the  House  not  a  little.  He  referred  to  the  fact  that  the  presentation 
of  this  measure  had  brought  him  from  his  retirement,  and  that  he  came  to 
point  out  the  false  issues  that  were  herein  presented  to  Parliament.  He 
wished  to  do  something  to  scatter  what  appeared  to  be  a  common  delusion 
and  a  prevailing  ignorance  relative  to  the  subject-matter  covered  by  this  bill. 
He  called  attention  to  the  fact  that  the  measure,  instead  of  havingr  been 
evolved  by  the  concurrence  of  the  representatives  of  the  Church  and  the 
leader  of  the  State  (meaning  the  prime  minister),  had  been  announced  to 
the  public  in  a  neiuspaperl  Even  this  great  impropriety  might  be  passed 
over  but  for  the  essential  badness  of  the  thing  proposed. 

The  speaker  then  said  that  ritualism  was  one  of  the  smallest  matters  at 
issue.  He  declared  that  if  the  privilege  of  enforcing  uniformity  was  conceded 
to  the  bishops  as  provided  in  this  bill  then  any  officious  bishop  would  have 
the  power  to  eradicate  all  the  local  usages,  the  time-honored  customs  and 
traditions  which  had  grown  up  with  respect  to  public  worship  in  Great 
Britain.  These  customs  and  traditions  were  a  part  of  the  undoubted  rights 
of  the  people.  These  rights  could  not  be  interfered  with  by  any  power 
except  a  despotic  power.  He  went  on  to  show  that  the  existing  canon  law 
required  many  things  to  be  performed  which  the  experience  of  worshipers 
had  discarded  as  either  useless  or  impracticable.  It  was  not  convenient  to 
catechize  children  at  every  afternoon  service.  It  was  not  necessary  to  read 
the  Athanasian  Creed  thirteen  times  a  year.  The  hymns  of  the  Church  even 
were  not  in  accordance  with  <-he  rubrics,  and  in  many  other  particulars  usage 
had  departed  for  the  sake  of  convenience  and  propriety  from  forms  which 
were  now  a  dead  letter. 

The  speaker  then  went  on  to  say  that  he  had  no  objection  to  expend- 
ing time  and  effort  in  the  discussion  of  the  question  before  the  House.  It 
was  in  principle  a  question  of  vast  importance.  He  would  not  be  the  man 
to  plead  difficulty  or  inconvenience  in  considering  it.  For  his  part  he  would 
from  stage  to  stage,  as  far  as  he  might,  point  out  the  real  nature  of  the 
thing  proposed.  He  would  endeavor  to  assist  the  House  in  sifting  to  the 
bottom  the  hurtful  elements  of  the  measure,  and  would  try  to  dispel  some 
of  the  gross  illusions  that  prevailed  in  the  countr)'.  Then  he  continued  in 
the  following  eloquent  strain:  "  I  think  I  have  shown  the  House  that  incon- 
venience must  arise  from  the  very  first  slip  of  judgment  on  the  part  of  a 
bishop  who  may  allow  an  improper  suit  to  proceed.  Well,  then,  the  House 
may  say  fairly,  'Do  not  you  think  something  ought  to  be  done.?'  and  I 
think  the  idea  that  something  ought  to  be   done   is  what  weighs   upon   the 


510 


LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 


/   ""'"rrx ' 


^^mi;::.:> 


iiA€iB;rn'i 


BISHOP    OF    CANTERBURY    DELIVERING    AN    ADDRESS    AT    ALBERT    HALL. 


OUT    OF    OFFICE.  5  I  I 

minds  of  most  men.  I  will  tell  you  what  I  think  ought  to  be  done  in  prin- 
ciple. The  House  can  do  nothing  without  acknowledging  how  much  we  owe 
to  the  great  mass  of  the  clergy  of  the  Church  of  England  for  their  zeal  and 
devotion. 

"  For  eighteen  years,"  continued  the  speaker,  "  I  was  a  servant  of  a  very 
large  body  of  them.  My  place  is  now  most  worthily  occupied  by  another  ; 
but  I  have  not  forgotten,  and  never  can  forget,  the  many  sacrifices  they  were 
always  ready  to  make  and  the  real  liberality  of  mind  which  upon  a  thou- 
sand occasions  they  have  shown.  But  even  that  is  a  thing  totally  insignifi- 
cant in  comparison  with  the  work  which  they  are  doing.  You  talk  of  the 
observance  of  the  law.  Why,  sir,  every  day  and  night  the  clergyman  of  the 
Church  of  England,  by  the  spirit  he  diffuses  around  him,  by  the  lessons  he 
imparts,  lays  the  nation  under  a  load  of  obligation  to  him.  The  eccentrici- 
ties of  a  handful  of  men,  therefore,  can  never  make  me  forget  the  illustrious 
merit  of  the  services  done  by  the  mass  of  the  clergy  in  an  age  which  is 
beyond  all  others  luxurious,  and,  I  fear,  selfish  and  worldly.  These  are  the 
men  who  hold  up  to  us  a  banner  on  which  is  written  the  motto  of  eternal 
life  and  of  the  care  for  things  unseen  which  must  remain  the  chief  hope  of  • 
man  throusrh  all  the  vicissitudes  of  his  mortal  life." 

Mr  Gladstone  did  not  conclude  with  this  bit  of  peroration  on  the  pend- 
ing bill,  but  proceeded  to  the  constructive  side,  and  offered  a  series  of  reso- 
lutions coverinor  the  around  under  discussion.  The  first  of  these  was  as 
follows  :  "  That  in  proceeding  to  consider  the  provisions  of  the  bill  for  the 
regulation  of  public  worship  this  House  cannot  do  otherwise  than  take  into 
view  the  lapse  of  more  than  two  centuries  since  the  enactment  of  the  present 
rubrics  of  the  common  prayer  book  of  the  Church  of  England  ;  the  multi- 
tude of  particulars  embraced  in  the  conduct  of  divine  service  under  their 
provisions  ;  the  doubts  occasionally  attaching  to  their  interpretation,  and 
the  number  of  points  they  are  thought  to  leave  undecided  ;  the  diversities 
of  local  custom  which  under  these  circumstances  have  long  prevailed,  and 
the  unreasonableness  of  proscribing  all  varieties  of  opinion  and  usage  among 
the  many  thousands  of  congregations  of  the  Church  distributed  throughout 
the  land." 

In  the  next  resolution  there  was  a  declaration  that  the  House  would 
be  reluctant  to  place  in  the  hands  of  every  single  bishop  powers  such  as 
those  contemplated  in  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury's  bill.  The  third 
resolution  acknowledged  the  general  indebtedness  of  Great  Britain  to  the 
clergy  for  their  influence  and  devotion  to  the  welfare  of  the  people  and 
their  stand  with  respect  to  public  order.  The  fourth  section  declared  will- 
ingness to  provide  remedies  against  any  neglect  or  departure  from  strict 
law  which  might  shoM^  a  design  to  alter,  without  national  consent,  the  spirit 
or  substance  of  the   national   religion.     The   fifth  clause   declared  that  the 


512  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILEIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

members  of  the  Church  should  receive  adequate  protection  against  pre- 
cipitate and  arbitrary  changes  of  estabHshed  customs ;  and  the  sixth  stated 
the  high  value  of  concurrence  in  such  matters  between  her  majesty's  gov- 
ernment and  the  ecclesiastical  authorities  in  the  initiative  of  all  legislation 
affecting  the  Established  Church. 

Here,  then,  was  a  scheme  much  more  comprehensive  than  that  of  the 
Archbishop  of  Canterbury.  It  was  constructed  on  precisely  the  opposite 
theory  of  what  ought  to  be  done  relative  to  the  given  subject-matter.  The 
debate  continued  for  several  days— not  that  anyone  supposed  that  Mr. 
Gladstone  would  be  able  to  force  the  substitution  of  his  resolutions  for  the 
pending  bill.  That  was,  politically  speaking,  impossible.  Not  even  the 
Liberals  would  solidly  support  the  Gladstonian  theory.  There  appeared  a 
distinct  purpose  in  the  House  to  stand  by  the  government  measure,  and  by 
that  policy  to  prevent  the  further  extension  of  the  ritualistic  tendency.  Mr. 
Gladstone,  seeing  the  inevitable,  withdrew  his  resolutions,  and  the  bill  for 
the  regulation  of  public  worship  was  passed  by  a  large  majority. 

The  next  measure  was  an  amendment  to  what  was  called  The  Endowed 
Schools  Act.  The  endowed  schools  had  been  under  the  control  since  1869 
of  a  body  called  the  Endovv^ed  Schools  Commissioners.  The  object  of  the 
amendment  was  to  transfer  the  g-overnment  of  such  institutions  to  the 
Charities  Commissioners,  and  also  to  change  the  sense  of  the  former  Act. 
The  bottom  intent  was  to  reconfirm  the  Church  of  England  in  the  powers 
and  prerogatives  which  she  had  hitherto  enjoyed  to  administer  authority 
over  those  schools  which  had  been  founded  with  a  recognition  of  a  bishop 
as  the  head  of  the  institution.  The  whole  measure  was  a  covert  proceeding 
aeainst  the  educational  leorislation  which  had  been  obtained  in  the  Liberal 
epoch  under  the  management  of  Honorable  William  E.  Forster. 

The  bill  of  amendment  was  distinctly  reactionary.  The  anti-Church 
party  in  England,  made  up  of  all  the  refugees  of  religion,  were  alarmed  and 
angered  at  the  proposition  to  put  back  numerous  schools,  which  had  been 
emancipated  within  ten  years  past,  under  an  ecclesiastical  despotism.  Of 
course  Mr.  Forster  himself  spoke  against  the  bill,  denouncing  it  as  reac- 
tionary and  unjust.  It  was  an  attempt,  he  said,  to  reestablish  the  old  claim 
of  the  Established  Church  to  primacy  in  the  matter  of  controlling  the  edu- 
cational system  of  Great  Britain.  Mr.  Gladstone  followed  in  like  argument. 
He  showed  that  for  a  period  of  a  hundred  and  thirty  years  (i  530-1 660).  the 
Church  had  had  no  title  to  such  endowments  as  those  considered  in  the 
pending  measure.  The  fact  that  Church  instruction  was  to  be  given  in 
schools  did  not  imply  Church  management  of  them.  The  legislation  now 
proposed  was  retrogressive.  It  was  intended  to  undo  the  beneficent  work 
of  the  recent  Parliament.  He  called  attention  of  the  House  to  the  fact  that 
for  fifty  years  the  initiative  of  every  progressive  policy,  whether  in  legisla- 


OUT    OF    OFFICE.  513 

tion  or  administration,  had  been  taken  by  the  Liberal  party.  This  done, 
the  Conservative  party  had  been  wont  to  move  up  and  occupy  the  advanced 
positions.  He  gave  citations  of  several  instances  in  which  this  had  been 
done.  Some  of  these  examples  went  back  to  the  close  of  the  seventeenth 
century. 

In  conclusion  the  speaker  broke  into  an  unusual  strain,  asking  and 
demanding  to  know  what  the  pending  bill  or  amendment  really  amounted 
to.  He  referred  to  the  statement  of  a  member  that  the  present  matter  was 
a  legacy  from  the  Liberal  government.  The  speaker  admitted  that  many 
legacies  had  been  left  by  the  Liberal  government.  In  fact,  every  feature 
of  current  policy  in  every  part  of  the  State  was  a  legacy  from  the  Liberal 
government.  "What,"  said  the  speaker,  "are  we  now  asked  to  do?  The 
majority  of  this  Parliament  is  invited  to  undo  the  work  of  their  predeces- 
sors in  office,  in  defiance  of  precedent,  which  should  weary  the  House  by 
enumerating,  so  ereat  are  their  numbers  and  uniformity.  It  is  rather 
remarkable  that  what  is  now  the  majority  is  about  to  undo  an  act  which 
they  never  opposed  in  its  passage.  I  believe  that  the  conditions  with  ref- 
erence to  schools  before  the  Toleration  Act  and  before  the  Reformation 
were  carried  in  this  House  without  a  division.  I  believe  I  am  even  strictly 
correct  in  saying  that  this  provision  was  not  only  agreed  to  without  a  divi- 
sion, but  without  an  adverse  voice,  when  the  question  was  put  from  the 
chair.  Yet  they  now  avail  themselves  of  the  first  opportunity  they  have  to 
attempt  to  repeal  what  they  did  not  object  to  when  it  was  before  Parlia- 
ment. Is  this  wise.''  Is  it  politic.^  Is  it  favorable  to  the  true  interests  of 
the  Established  Church.?" 

Mr.  Gladstone  went  on  to  inquire  what  judgment  had  been  passed 
upon  the  English  nation  by  men  of  the  highest  character  and  Intelligence 
in  foreigfn  countries.  He  asserted  that  such  men  had  uttered  truths  with 
regard  to  England,  her  people,  and  her  policies  which  it  would  be  well  to 
consider.  "  What  have  they  told  us,"  said  he,  "  of  their  judgment  of  the 
course  and  conduct  of  the  British  legislature  ?  If  you  consult  any  one  of 
those  great  political  writers  who  adorn  the  literatures  of  their  own  coun- 
tries you  will  find  their  language  respecting  us  uniform.  When  they  look 
at  our  political  constitution  they  are  struck  by  the  multitude  of  obstructions 
which,  for  the  defense  of  minorities,  we  allow  to  be  placed  in  the  way  of 
legislation.  They  are  struck  by  observing  that  the  immediate  result  is  great 
slowness  in  the  steps  we  take  ;  but  when  they  refer  to  the  consequences  of 
this  slowness  they  find  one  great  and  powerful  compensation,  and  it  is  that 
in  England  all  progress  is  sure.  Vestigia  nn/la  retrorsum.  Whatever 
has  been  once  decided,  whatever  has  once  taken  its  place  in  the  statute 
book  or  has  been  adopted  in  our  administration,  no  feelings  of  party 
and  no  vicissitudes  of  majorities  or  minorities  are  allowed  to  draw  the 
33 


514  I-IFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    K.    CJLADSTONE. 

nation  into  the  dangerous,  though  they  may  be  the  seductive,  paths  of 
retrogression. 

"  That  is  the  principle,"  said  Mr.  Gladstone,  "to  which  we  appeal  ;  and 
even  were  the  rights  of  the  case  less  clear,  even  were  it  equitable  instead  of 
inequitable,  for  the  Church  to  make  the  claims  which  are  made  in  her  behalf 
by  the  government,  most  unwise  would  it  be  on  the  part  of  any  administra- 
tion— and,  of  all  others,  most  unwise  on  the  part  of  the  Conservative  admin- 
istration— to  give  a  shock  to  one  of  the  great  guiding  principles  and  laws 
which  have  governed  the  policy  of  this  country  throughout  a  course  of 
many  generations,  and  the  solidity  and  security  of  which  is  one  of  the  main 
guarantees  of  the  interests  we  possess  and  the  liberty  we  enjoy." 

The  effect  of  this  strong  presentation  was  noticeable  in  the  result. 
The  bill  was  passed  by  a  majority  of  ninety-two,  and  the  motion  for  going 
into  committee  on  the  measure  prevailed.  Mr.  Disraeli,  however,  more 
shrewd  than  his  following,  perceived  the  danger  that  was  abroad  on  the 
score  of  such  a  measure,  and  consented  in  committee  to  a  considerable  mod- 
ification in  the  bill,  whereby  it  was  limited  to  a  simple  transfer  of  the  gov- 
ernment of  the  endowed  schools  from  the  commissioners  to  the  Charity 
Board.  He  did  this  with  the  allegation  that  the  parts  of  the  bill  for  the 
withdrawal  of  which  the  government  gave  consent  were  so  complicated  as 
not  to  be  easily  understood.  This  concession  gave  opportunity  to  Mr. 
Gladstone  to  attack  the  government  with  more  than  his  usual  energy;  but 
we  need  not  here  repeat  the  polemics  of  the  occasion. 

The  episode  which  we  have  just  described  was  the  beginning  of  a  gen- 
eral inquiry  on  Mr.  Gladstone's  part  into  the  fundamental  principles  of  an 
educational  polity  for  Great  Britain.  Indeed,  before  the  period  at  which 
we  have  now  arrived  he  was  engaged  in  this  useful  and  important  study. 
It  was  known  abroad  that  the  ex-prime  minister  was  an  adept  in  educational 
controversies,  and  he  was  frequently  invited  to  deliver  public  addresses  on 
the  subject.  One  of  these  was  spoken  just  after  the  adjournment  of  the 
parliamentary  session  of  1872,  being  addressed  to  the  public  on  the  occa- 
sion of  the  annual  distribution  of  prizes  to  the  students  in  Liverpool  College. 

The  address  on  this  occasion  was  in  its  main  theme  a  plea  for  the  higher 
education  ;  but  the  speaker  concerned  himself  not  a  little  with  those  forms  of 
extreme  unbelief  which  had  arisen  in  connection  with  the  scientific  evolu- 
tion. He  noticed  in  particular  the  great  work  of  David  Friedrich  Strauss, 
Der  Alte  unci  der  Neue  Glanbc  ("  The  Old  Belief  and  the  New"),  just  then 
issued.  He  also  spoke  of  the  divisions  and  disagreements  in  belief  among 
Christians,  and  denied  that  the  existence  of  such  divisions  rendered  it 
difficult  to  know  what  real  Christianity  is.  He  held  that  Christians,  though 
disagreeing  in  belief,  have  nevertheless  a  substantial  unity  in  fundamental 
doctrine.     He  called  attention  of  the  students  to  the  fact  that  fifteen  hun- 


OUT    OF    OFFICE. 


515 


dred  years  had  elapsed  since  the  great  controversies  respecting  the  Deity 
and  the  Godhead  had  been  determined.  Since  that  remote  period  there  had 
been  a  fundamental  agreement  of  nearly  all  Christians  on  the  cardinal  doc- 
trines of  reliorion. 

Then  the  speaker  continued  as  follows  :  "  It  is  the  opinion  and  boast  of 
some  that  man  is  not  responsible  for  his  belief.  Lord  Brougham  was  at  one 
time  stated  to  have  given  utterance  to  this  opinion,  whether  truly  I  know 
not.  But  this  I  know,  it  was  my  privilege  to  hear  from  his  own  lips  the 
needful  and  due  limitation  of  that  proposition.  '  Man,'  he  said,  '  is  not 
responsible  to  man  for  his  belief.'  But  as  before  God  one  and  the  same 
law  applies  to  opinions  and  to  acts,  or  rather  to  inward  and  to  outer  acts, 
for  opinions  are  inward  acts.  Many  a  wrong  opinion  may  be  guiltless 
because  formed  in  ignorance,  and  because  that  ignorance  may  not  be  our 
fault  ;  but  who  shall  presume  to  say  there  is  no  mercy  for  wrong  actions 
also  when  they,  too,  have  been  due  to  ignorance,  and  that  ignorance  has  not 
been  guilty  ?  The  question  is  not  whether  judgments  and  actions  are  in  the 
same  degree  influenced  by  the  condition  of  the  moral  motives.  It  is  unde- 
niable that  self-love  and  passion  have  an  influence  upon  both  ;  then,  so  far  as 
that  influence  goes,  for  both  we  must  be  prepared  to  answer.  Should  we,  in 
common  life,  ask  a  body  of  swindlers  for  an  opinion  upon  swindling,  or  of 
gamblers  for  an  opinion  upon  gambling,  or  of  misers  upon  bounty.^  And 
if  in  matters  of  religion  we  allow  pride  and  perverseness  to  raise  a  cloud 
between  us  and  the  truth,  so  that  we  see  it  not,  the  false  opinion  that  we 
form  is  but  the  index  of  that  perverseness  and  that  pride,  and  both  for 
them,  and  for  it  as  their  offspring  we  shall  be  justly  held  responsible. 

"  Who  they  are  upon  whom  this  responsibility  will  fall  it  is  not  ours  to 
judge.  These  laws  are  given  to  us,  not  to  apply  presumptuously  to  others, 
but  to  enforce  honestly  against  ourselves.  Next  to  a  Christian  life,  my 
friends,  you  will  find  your  best  defense  against  reckless  novelty  of  specula- 
tion in  sobriety  of  temper  and  in  sound  intellectual  habits.  Be  slow  to  stir 
inquiries  which  you  do  not  mean  particularly  to  pursue  to  their  proper  end. 
Be  not  afraid  to  suspend  your  judgment,  or  feel  and  admit  to  yourselves 
how  narrow  are  the  bounds  of  knowledge.  Do  not  too  readily  assume  that 
to  us  have  been  opened  royal  roads  to  truth  which  were  heretofore  hidden 
from  the  whole  family  of  man  ;  for  the  opening  of  such  roads  would  not 
be  so  much  favor  as  caprice.  If  it  is  bad  to  yield  a  blind  submission 
to  authority  it  is  not  less  an  error  to  deny  to  it  its  reasonable  weight. 
Eschewing  a  servile  adherence  to  the  past,  regard  it  with  reverence  and 
gratitude,  and  accept  its  accumulations  in  inward  as  well  as  outward  things 
as  the  patrimony  which  it  is  your  part  in  life  both  to  preserve  and  to 
improve." 

After  the  parliamentary  session  of  1875  was  well  under  way  ^Nlr.  Glad- 


5l6  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

Stone  attended  the  House  of  Commons  but  infrequently.  He  busied  him- 
self in  retirement  with  his  intellectual  pursuits.  Quite  different  these  were 
from  the  pursuits  of  Mr.  Disraeli  under  like  circumstances.  The  latter  when 
politically  undone  was  wont  to  retreat  to  imaginative  literature,  and  to 
occupy  his  faculties  with  the  writing  of  fiction.  Like  his  father  before  him, 
he  achieved  in  the  world  of  polite  letters  a  wide  and  lasting  reputation.  It 
was  under  such  circumstances  that  he  composed  his  novels,  nearly  all  of 
them  political  in  their  motif.  His  Vindication  of  the  British  Constitution 
was  written  when  he  was  thirty  years  of  age.  Vivian  Grey  was  published 
in  1826;  The  Yonng  Duke,  in  1831  ;  the  Wondrous  Tale  of  Airoy/\n  1833: 
the  Revolutionary  Epic,  in  1834  ;  Henrietta  Temple,  in  1837  ;  Coningsby,  in 
1844  ;  Sybil,  in  1845  I  Tancred,  in  1847  J  ^^"^^  Life  of  George  Bentinck,  in  1852  ; 
Lothair,  in  1870;  and  Endyniion,  in  1880,  the  year  before  his  death. 

Very  different  from  these  employments  of  Mr.  Disraeli  were  those  of 
Gladstone.  His  serious,  almost  saturnine  mind,  could  but  be  occupied  with 
heavier  themes.  To  him  the  condition  of  society,  the  tendencies  of  religious 
thought,  the  circumstances  of  progress,  and  the  evolution  of  governmental 
principles  appeared  more  worthy  of  literary  consideration.  In  185  i,  as  we 
have  seen,  he  published  his  celebrated  Letters  on  the  State  Persecutions  of 
the  Neapolitan  Government.  His  Studies  on  Homer  and  the  Homeric  Age 
was  published  in  1858;  the  Juventus  Mu7idi,m  1869;  his  great  essay  in 
review  of  John  Robert  Seeley's  Ecce  Homo,  in  1868  ;  his  pamphlets  on  T Jic 
Vatican  Decrees,  in  1874-75;  his  Bulgarian  Horrors,  in  1876;  and  his 
Homeric  Synchronism,  in  1876.  These  works  were  by  no  means  all  that  he 
produced  ;  but  they  were  typical  of  much  more  in  the  same  serious  and 
elevated  sphere  of  literature. 

The  reader  will  observe  from  the  dates  just  given  how  the  time  of  Mr.. 
Gladstone  at  Hawarden  was  occupied  in  the  interval  of  his  rest  after  the 
overthrow  of  the  Liberal  ministry  in  1874.  Nor  may  we  pass  from  this 
subject  without  noticing  the  fact  that  the  friends  of  Mr.  Gladstone  felt  them- 
selves frequently  justified  in  contrasting  the  literary  avocations  of  Glad- 
stone with  those  of  his  rival.  Capital  was  sometimes  made  out  of  the 
contrast.  The  Liberal  newspapers  were  not  slow  to  use  such  a  circumstance 
to  the  detriment  of  the  "Asian  Mystery''  and  the  glorification  of  their 
favorite.  On  acertain  occasion  the  Pall  Mall  Gazette  found  reason  to  draw 
the  contrast  referred  to  in  a  memorable  manner,  saying,  "  Like  the  psalmist, 
the  Liberal  leader  may  well  protest  that  verily  he  has  cleansed  his  heart  in  vain 
and  washed  his  hands  in  innocency  ;  all  day  long  he  has  been  plagued  by 
Whig  lords  and  chastened  every  morning  by  Radical  manufacturers.  As 
blamelessly  as  any  curate  he  has  written  about  Ecce  Homo,  2ind  he  has  never 
made  a  speech,  even  in  the  smallest  country  town,  without  calling  out  with 
David,  '  How  foolish  am  I,  and  how  ignorant  I '     For  all  this  what  does  he 


OUT    OF    OFFICE.  517 

see  ?  The  scorner  [meaning  Mr.  Disraeli]  who  shot  out  the  lip  and  shook 
the  head  at  him  across  the  table  of  the  House  of  Commons  last  session  [this 
was  written  in  1868]  has  now  more  than  heart  could  wish;  his  eyes,  speak- 
ing in  an  oriental  manner,  stand  out  with  fatness,  he  speaketh  loftily,  and 
pride  compasseth  him  as  with  a  chain.  .  .  .  That  the  writer  of  frivolous 
stories  about  'Vivian  Grey'  and  '  Coningsby'  should  grasp  the  scepter  be- 
fore the  writer  of  beautiful  and  serious  things  about  Ecce  Homo — the  man 
who  was  epigrammatic,  flashy,  arrogant,  before  the  man  who  never  perpe- 
trated an  epigram  in  his  life,  is  always  fervid,  and  would  as  soon  die  as  admit 
that  he  had  a  shade  more  brain  than  his  footman — the  Radical  corrupted 
into  a  Tory  before  the  Tory  purified  and  elevated  into  a  Radical — is  not  this 
enough  to  make  an  honest  man  rend  his  mantle,  and  shave  his  head,  and  sit 
down  among  the  ashes  inconsolable.?  Let  us  play  the  tod  underrated  part 
of  Bildad  the  Shuhite  for  a  space,  while  our  chiefs  have  thus  unwelcome 
leisure  to  scrape  themselves  with  potsherds,  and  to  meditate  upon  the  evil 
way  of  the  world."  This  may  certainly  suffice  as  a  specimen  of  the  Liberal 
estimate  of  the  superiority  of  the  sober,  unwitty  Gladstone  to  the  flam- 
boyant, coruscating  Disraeli. 

Several  years  after  his  address  to  the  Liverpool  students  Mr.  Glad- 
stone delivered  another  of  like,  but  superior,  character  in  aid  of  the  Buckley 
Institute.  This  address  was  also  given  in  a  recess  of  Parliament,  namely,  in 
the  summer  of  1878.  His  theme  was  that  of  the  benefit  of  the  brotherly 
societies  among  workingmen.  To  this  class  he  addressed  himself  with  sym- 
pathetic interest.  In  the  first  place  he  insisted  that  such  organizations 
should  be  founded  on  enduring  principles — such  principles  as  must  not  be 
abandoned  under  changing  circumstances.  Otherwise  the  workingmen  who 
might  enter  the  brotherhoods  in  early  life  would  be  obliged  as  they  grew 
older  to  abandon  their  favorite  halls  on  account  of  vicious  or  vitiated  prin- 
ciples underlying  the  organization. 

Mr.  Gladstone  said  that  he  hoped  the  retail  dealers  of  the  country, 
coming  to  transact  their  business  on  the  basis  of  money  payments  instead 
of  credits,  would  be  at  length  the  friendly  competitors  of  the  brotherly 
societies.  These  societies  might  be  extended  to  many  industrial  pursuits — 
some  to  manufacturing,  some  to  farming,  some  to  this,  and  some  to  that — 
for  the  immediate  benefit  of  themselves  and  the  general  benefit  of  all.  The 
trades  unions  ought  to  be  conducted  on  the  principles  the  speaker  had  out- 
lined. He  said  that  it  was  difficult  to  carry  large  and  liberal  ideas  into 
such  organizations  and  to  control  them  thereby.  Certainly  such  principles 
ought  to  control  on  the  question  of  the  employment  of  women  and  boys 
and  girls,  who  were  often  held  down  by  a  narrow  and  selfish  policy.  That 
this  should  be  so  was  bad  for  the  unions  themselves.  The  labor  of  women 
and  children  ought  to  be  put  on  the  highest  and  most  generous  plane,  and 


5l8  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

the  regulation  of  their  labor  ought  to  be  humane  to  a  degree.  There 
should  be  a  provision  for  recreation,  for  games,  for  refreshments.  Every- 
thing generous  and  liberal  should  be  provided  by  the  unions  for  their  mem- 
bership, and  such  a  policy  would  be  found  to  be  most  beneficial  even  from 
a  selfish  point  of  view. 

In  particular  the  speaker  would  urge  upon  his  hearers  the  necessity  of 
providing  opportunities  of  intellectual  development  for  the  working  classes. 
He  was  glad  to  believe  that  such  opportunities  were  then  more  abundant 
than  they  had  ever  been  before.  The  instruction- of  the  common  people  was 
easier  and  more  ample  than  at  any  former  period.  Publishers,  by  dissemi- 
nating means  of  information  to  the  millions,  had  performed  the  part  of 
Socrates,  who  w^as  said  to  have  brought  down  philosophy  from  heaven  to 
earth.  In  the  time  of  the  speaker's  boyhood  books  and  all  literature  had 
been  beyond  the  reach  of  the  working  people.  As  a  boy  he  used  to  go  to 
the  stalls  of  the  booksellers  and  find  there  nothing  that  was  within  the 
reach  of  the  common  man.  He  had  himself  paid  two  pounds  sixteen  shil- 
lings for  his  first  copy  of  Shakespeare,  but  such  a  copy  could  now  be  bought 
for  three  shillings — less  than  one  eighteenth  of  the  former  price.  All  man- 
ner of  books  had  become  accessible. 

"  We  may  be  told,"  said  Mr.  Gladstone,  "  that  you  want  amusement ;  but 
that  does  not  exclude  improvement.  There  are  a  set  of  worthless  books 
written  now  and  at  times  which  you  should  avoid,  which  profess  to  give  amuse- 
ment ;  but  in  reading  the  works  of  such  authors  as  Shakespeare  and  Scott 
there  is  the  greatest  possible  amusement  in  its  best  form.  Do  you  suppose 
that  when  you  see  men  engaged  in  study  they  dislike  it  }  No.  There  is  labor, 
no  doubt,  of  a  certain  kind— mental  labor — but  it  is  so  associated  with  in- 
terest all  along  that  it  is  forgotten  in  the  delight  which  it  carries  in  its  per- 
formance, and  no  people  know  that  better  than  the  working  classes.  I 
want  you  to  understand  that  multitudes  of  books  now  are  constantly  being 
prepared  and  placed  within  reach  of  the  population  at  large,  for  the  most 
part  executed  by  writers  of  a  high  stamp,  having  subjects  of  the  greatest  in- 
terest, and  which  enable  you  at  a  moderate  price,  not  to  get  a  cheap  litera- 
ture which  is  secondary  in  its  quality,  but  to  go  straight  into  the  very  heart, 
if  I  may  say  so,  into  the  sanctuary  of  the  temple  of  literature,  and  become 
acquainted  with  the  greatest  and  best  works  that  the  men  of  our  country 
have  produced.  It  is  not  to  be  supposed  that  workingmen,  on  coming  home 
from  labor,  are  to  study  Euclid  and  works  of  that  character,  and  it  is  not  to 
be  desired  unless  in  the  case  of  very  special  gifts  ;  but  what  is  to  be  desired 
is  that  some  effort  should  be  made  by  men  of  all  classes  to,  and  perhaps  by 
none  more  than  by  the  laboring  class,  to  lift  ourselves  above  the  level  of 
what  is  purely  frivolous  and  to  endeavor  to  find  our  amusement  in  making 
ourselves  acquainted  with  things  of  real  interest  and  beauty." 


OUT    OF    OFFICE.  519 

From  these  examples  of  Mr.  Gladstone's  public  utterances  the  reader 
is  able  to  judge  of  the  lines  on  which  his  mind  was  making  its  excursions 
in  the  period  just  after  the  overthrow  of  the  Liberal  ministry.  It  was  more 
than  four  years  from  that  event,  namely  in  June  of  1879,  ^^at  he  delivered 
another  address  in  similar  vein  on  the  occasion  of  the  distribution  of  prizes 
at  the  school  of  Mill  Hill.  The  various  institutions  were  anxious  to  gain  the 
services  of  the  statesman  on  such  occasions.  It  might  be  noted  that  the 
more  popular  the  school  the  more  Mr.  Gladstone's  presence  was  desired. 
The  institution  at  Mill  Hill  was  under  the  patronage  of  the  Nonconformists, 
who  were  as  proud  of  their  local  interest  as  were  they  of  the  Church  Estab- 
lishment of  theirs. 

On  the  occasion  referred  to  Mr.  Gladstone  began  with  the  very  obvious 
exhortation  to  his  young  hearers  that  they  should  not  make  their  prizes  the 
be-all  and  the  end-all  of  their  exertions.  Neither  should  those  students 
who  had  failed  to  receive  prizes  feel  on  that  account  a  loss  of  inspiration. 
Everything  depended  upon  the  future  exertion  of  the  young  people,  without 
much  retrospective  consideration  of  what  they  had  or  had  not  accomplished 
at  school.  The  mind  of  the  speaker  reverted  to  the  circumstances  of  his 
own  education  nearly  sixty  years  previously.  He  declared  that  he  had  not 
renounced  his  fidelity  to  those  time-honored  schools  to  which  he  was  per- 
sonally indebted.  He  told  the  youth  of  Mill  Hill  that  though  they  had  not 
the  advantages  that  were  so  abundantly  offered  at  the  noble  and  ancient 
seats  of  learning,  they  should  not  for  that  reason  feel  themselves  disparaged. 
Those  institutions  themselves  were  once  fresh  and  new. 

"  If  you  are  not  sustained,"  said  he,  addressing  the  students,  "  by  ancient 
traditions,  neither  are  you  liampered  by  any  prejudices  which  in  certain 
cases  may  prevail.  All  that  you  have  achieved  is  before  you.  Their  great 
experiences  are  at  your  service  and  command.  You  have  power  to  appro- 
priate to  yourselves  every  good  rule  they  have  made,  and  you  have  the 
power,  where  you  are  not  satisfied  with  the  results,  to  correct  them.  .  .  . 
These  are  great  advantages;  and  that  which  others  possess  because  their 
fathers  handed  it  down  to  them,  you,  I  hope,  are  gradually  and  progressively 
accumulating,  in  order  to  hand  it  over  to  those  who  may  come  after  you. 
However,  it  was  a  great  and  bold  undertaking  to  establish  a  school  of  this 
kind  in  a  field  which  was  already  occupied  by  those  great  institutions  so 
well  known  as  the  public  schools  of  England. 

"  I  need  not  say  I  pay  them  [meaning  the  founders  of  Mill  Hill  School] 
the  highest  honor  for  determining  to  give  this  advantage  of  a  public  school 
education,  not  on  a  basis  merely  neutral  or  negative  with  regard  to  religion, 
but  on  a  basis  which  would  supply  all  their  wants  and  enable  the  pupils, 
according  to  the  conscientious  convictions  their  parents  entertained,  and  in 
which  they  have  been   reared,  to  prepare  themselves  for  that  Christian  life 


520  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

on  which  they  are  about  to  enter.  I  earnestly  hope  that  upon  that  basis 
on  which  you  have  begun  you  will  continue  to  stand.  As  you  have  not 
been  ashamed  or  afraid  to  face  the  difficult  enterprise  of  founding  this  public 
school,  so  I  trust  you  will  never  be  ashamed  or  afraid  of  recognizing,  not  a 
generalizing  and  neutralizing  religion,  but  a  religious  teaching  fully  equal  to 
all  the  honorable  purposes  of  life." 

It  was  in  this  vein  that  Mr.  Gladstone  was  wont  to  address  young 
people  on  the  occasions  when  he  was  called  to  deliver  formal  speeches  to 
them.  This,  as  we  see  from  the  dates,  happened  frequently  in  the  interval 
of  his  retirement.  We  have  not  yet  recounted  the  circumstances  which  led 
to  his  resignation  of  the  Liberal  leadership.  After  his  first  letter  to  Lord 
Granville  he  addressed  to  that  nobleman  a  second  under  date  of  January 
6,  1875.  In  this  he  referred  to  his  former  communication,  expressive  of 
his  personal  desires.  He  said  that  the  time  had  arrived,  as  he  thought, 
when  he  ought  to  revert  to  the  subject  of  his  letter  of  March  12,  1874. 

"  Before  determining,"  said  he,  "  whether  I  should  offer  to  assume  a 
charge  which  might  extend  over  a  length  of  time,  I  have  reviewed  with  all 
the  care  in  my  power  a  number  of  considerations,  both  public  and  private, 
of  wdiich  a  portion,  and  these  not  by  any  means  insignificant,  were  not  in 
existence  at  the  date  of  that  letter.  The  result  has  been  that  I  see  no  public 
advantage  in  my  continuing  to  act  as  the  leader  of  the  Liberal  party,  and 
that  at  the  age  of  sixty-five,  and  after  forty-two  years  of  a  laborious  public 
life,  I  think  myself  entitled  to  retire  on  the  present  opportunity.  This 
retirement  is  dictated  to  me  by  my  personal  views  as  to  the  best  method  of 
spending  the  closing  years  of  my  life.  I  need  hardly  say  that  my  conduct 
in  Parliament  will  continue  to  be  governed  by  the  principles  on  which  I 
have  hitherto  acted  ;  and  whatever  arrangements  may  be  made  for  the  treat- 
ment of  General  business,  and  for  the  advantage  or  convenience  of  the 
Liberal  party,  they  will  have  my  cordial  support.  I  should,  perhaps,  add 
that  I  am  at  present,  and  mean  for  a  short  time  to  be,  engaged  on  a  special 
matter  which  occupies  me  closely."  (This  referred  to  his  preparation  of  the 
pamphlets  on   TJie  Vatican  Decrees?) 

Discussion  not  a  little  ensued  as  to  who  should  fill,  or  rather  occupy, 
Mr.  Gladstone's  place  as  leader  of  the  Liberals.  There  was  much  confusion 
among  them  on  the  subject.  They  had  two  men,  upon  either  of  whom,  so 
far  as  their  abilities  were  concerned,  the  honor  and  responsibility  might 
have  been  well  conferred.  These  were  Mr.  Robert  Lowe  and  Mr.  John 
Bright.  Either  would  have  made  a  leader  of  which  no  party  would  have 
had  occasion  to  blush  so  far  as  the  intellectual  force  of  the  one  chosen 
might  be  concerned  ;  but  many  other  elements  were  needed  in  a  successful 
leader.  Mr.  Lowe  was  in  several  particulars  one  of  the  most  brilliant  men 
in   Parliament;  but  he  was  powerful  in  only  a  few  particulars.     He  was  not 


OUT    OF    OFFICE.  52  I 

altogether  discreet.  His  record  on  questions  of  prime  importance  was  not 
wholly  consistent.  He  was  capable  of  losing-  his  balance  under  provocation, 
and  not  very  capable  of  regaining  it. 

As  for  Mr.  Bright,  all  the  world  is  acquainted  with  the  sterling  qualities 
of  that  great  and  honest  man.  If  the  Liberal  party  had  required  a  leader 
who  was  simply  great  and  honest,  those  who  were  in  search  would  on  com- 
ing to  Mr.  Bright  have  had  to  exclaim,  Seek-no-farther  !  But  it  was  neces- 
sary then,  as  it  has  been  always  necessary,  that  a  great  political  leader 
should  have  the  ability  of  putting  his  conscience  suddenly  in  his  boot  and 
clapping  on  a  mask  through  which  to  utter  platitudes.  The  faculty  of  doing 
this  work  adroitly  has  ever  been  regarded  as  a  prime  essential.  It  was 
precisely  the  faculty  that  John  Bright  never  had.  In  fact,  Mr.  Gladstone 
himself  had  it  in  so  small  a  measure  that  his  deficiency  in  this  particular 
was  always  remarked  by  the  subtle  politicians  with  whom  he  had  to  deal. 
Hence  neither  Mr.  Lowe  nor  Mr.  Bright  could  answer  the  call.  There  were 
four  others  who  were  canvassed,  namely,  Mr.  William  E.  Forster,  Sir  Wil- 
liam Vernon  Harcourt,  Mr.  George  Joachim  Goschem,and  Spencer  Compton 
Cavendish,  Marquis  of  Hartington,  After  much  discussion  the  choice  fell 
on  the  last  named  statesman,  who,  notwithstanding  his  titles  in  the  nobility 
was,  for  his  substantial  qualities  and  undoubted  liberalism,  cheerfully  accepted 
by  the  party. 

The  2 1  St  of  April  in  this  year  saw  Mr.  Gladstone  again  in  the  House  of 
Commons.  On  that  date  Mr.  Osborne  Morgan  introduced  a  measure  known 
as  the  Burials  Bill.  It  was  proposed  that  in  case  of  burial  in  the  grounds  of 
a  parish  church  the  friends  of  the  dead  should  have  a  right  to  choose  what 
service  soever  they  would  have  rendered  on  the  occasion.  Here  again  we 
strike  a  question  the  like  of  which  could  not  arise  in  the  United  States.  For 
why  should  not  the  friends  of  the  dead  have  a  right  to  bury  them  with  any 
services  or  no  services  at  all, according  to  their  liking.?  Strange  indeed  that 
the  State  should  ever  presume  in  any  age  or  country  to  prescribe  the  partic- 
ular religious  form  with  which  the  bodies  of  the  dead  should  be  consigned 
to  the  windowless  chambers  ! 

But  in  England  such  presumption  existed.  Mr.  Gladstone,  learning  of 
the  pending  of  this  bill,  came  into  the  House  and  spoke  in  its  defense,  say- 
ing that  he  was  not  willing  to  stop  with  supporting  the  measure  with  a  silent 
vote.  He  admitted  that  it  was  a  hardship  that  clergymen  of  the  Establish- 
ment should  be  obliged  to  perform  burial  services  where  neither  they  nor 
the  friends  of  the  dead  desired  to  have  it  done.  This  was  certainly  a  truism 
of  the  contention  !  He  agfreed  with  Mr.  Morg-an  that  those  who  were 
not  communicants  of  the  Church  of  England  had  serious  cause  of  protest 
when  they  were  debarred  from  the  privilege  of  having  their  own  religious 
forms  observed  at  the  funerals  of  their  deceased  friends.     This  was  a  real 


522 


LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    K.    GLADSTONE. 


grievance.  There  was  one  feature  of  the  case,  said  the  speaker,  in  which 
The  clergyman  of  the  parish  had  rights  in  case  of  the  burial  of  persons  not 
belonging  to  the  communion.  The  clergyman  was  responsible  for  the  safe 
keeping  of  the  churchyard.  He  might  properly  see  that  the  same  was  not 
trodden  down  by  unruly  crowds.     Otherwise,  the  burial  in  the  parish  yard 


SIR   WILLIAM    VERNON    HARCOURT. 


micrht  well  be  conceded  to  Nonconformists,  the  ceremony  being  conducted 
in  their  own  manner.  Mr.  Bright  took  up  the  theme  with  his  accustomed 
ability,  and  when  it  came  to  a  vote  the  ministerial  majority  against  it  was 
reduced  to  fourteen. 

It  was  now  Mr.  Gladstone's  privilege  as  a  member  of  the  opposition  to 
criticise  the  budgets  of  his  Conservative  successor,  Sir  Stafford  Northcote. 
This  he  did  on  the  presentation  of  the  chancellor  of  the  exchequer's  report 
for  the  year  1875.      He  spoke  on   the  reading  of  the  budget,  and  criticised 


OUT    OF    OFFICE. 


523 


severely  the  proposition  of  Sir  Stafford  relative  to  reducing  the  national 
debt.  The  chancellor  of  the  exchequer  proposed  to  create  in  a  novel  man- 
ner a  sinking  fund,  to  the  amount  of  the  interest  on  twenty-eight  million 
pounds  annual!}'.  By  this  means  he  hoped  according  to  his  calculations  to 
pay  off  within  a  period  of  thirty  years  two  hundred  and  thirteen  million 
pounds  of  the  public  debt. 

Mr.  Gladstone  assailed  this  project  both  destructively  and  construct- 
ively. He  said  that  Sir  Stafford  Northcote's  estimates  for  revenue,  involv- 
ing his  ability  to  create  the  sinking  fund,  were  incorrect.  On  the  other  side, 
he  said  that  there  were  three  methods  by  which  the  national  debt  might  be 
reduced.  The  first  of  these  was  by  a  surplus  of  revenues  over  expenditures. 
The  second  was  by  converting  the  debt  into  terminable  annuities,  and  the 
third  w^as  by  fixed  appropriations.  Much,  he  contended,  had  already  been 
accomplished  ;  but  he  was  sure  that  the  plan  now  proposed  would  not  work 
out  the  expected  results  in  the  ensuing  thirty  years,  Certainly  there  was 
not  at  the  present  time  a  farthing  of  surplus  to  justify  the  estimates  of  the 
chancellor  of  the  exchequer. 

A  new  sinking  fund,  continued  Mr.  Gladstone,  could  not  be  produced 
by  enacting  a  tax  for  its  production.  No  finance  minister  in  the  world  would 
have  the  hardihood  to  propose  such  "an  undertaking.  Such  a  minister  of 
finance  as  that  had  not  yet  appeared  among  the  nations.  "  History,"  said 
Mr.  Gladstone,  with  more  than  his  accustomed  humor,  "  has  not  produced 
any  such  creation  ;  no  such  litsus  fiaturcr  has  as  yet  appeared  ;  and  I  do 
not  think  that  the  government  of  a  party  which  justly  prides  itself  on  an 
adherence  to  the  traditions  of  the  past,  on  learning  lessons  from  antiquity, 
on-  avoiding  vain  theories  and  keeping  to  the  lessons  of  experience,  ought 
to  be  the  people  to  delude  us  by  projects  such  as  this  into  the  marshes  in 
which  we  shall  be  plunged,  instead  of  remaining  upon  the  safe  highroad  by 
w^hich  we  have  hitherto  traveled." 

In  this  encounter  Sir  Stafford  Northcote  was  able  to  turn  the  tables  at 
one  point  on  his  distinguished  antagonist.  He  showed  that  what  Mr.  Glad- 
stone said  about  terminable  annuities  was  quite  inconsistent  with  one  of  his 
former  utterances  on  the  same  subject.  For  the  rest  the  chancellor  of  the 
exchequer  was  obliged  to  fall  back  upon  the  government  majority  to  carry 
the  adoption  of  the  budget  against  the  criticisms  of  the  ex-prime  minister. 

We  have  here  reached  a  period  in  the  history  of  Great  Britain  and  of 
Mr.  Gladstone's  life  when  the  public  mind  was  profoundly  agitated  on  eccle- 
siastical questions.  The  future,  we  think,  will  be  surprised  at  the  nature  of 
these  questions,  or  rather  at  the  fact  that  the  highest  thought  of  Great 
Britain  was  earnestly  concerned  about  them.  It  is  probable  that  the  reli- 
gious and  ecclesiastical  history  of  the  British  nation  is  the  most  complicated 
ot  any  in   the  world.     Without  being  at  the  bottom  a  really  religious  race 


524  LI^E    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

the  English  family  has  made  a  tremendous  display  of  activity  and  concern 
about  Church  matters.  At  the  first  England  was  a  Catholic  country;  but 
English  Catholicism  had  its  roots  in  a  subsoil  of  profound  paganism.  With 
the  Reformation  England  was  broken  off  from  Rome,  but  was  not  otherwise 
much  reformed. 

The  great  spiritual  concern  that  broke  over  Germany  and  Switzerland 
and  France  was  virtually  unfelt  in  the  cold  British  Isles.  But  the  people  of 
England  must  needs  reform  the  Church  to  the  extent  of  getting  an  estab- 
lishment of  their  own.  Romanism  retreated  into  Ireland,  while  a  really 
Reformed  Kirk,  perhaps  the  most  stony-hearted  in  the  world,  established 
itself  in  Scotland.  By  and  by  there  came  in  England  the  dissenting  insur- 
rections, with  the  resultant  effect  of  creating  a  whole  brood  of  earnest  sects, 
each  of  which,  without  knowledge  of  history  or  any  large  view  of  mankind, 
sincerely  regarded  itself  as  the  center  and  first  fountain  of  pure  Christianity, 
all  the  rest  being  false  centers  and  false  fountains,  spouting  bitter  waters,  the 
streams  whereof,  instead  of  refreshing,  made  miasmatic  all  lands  and  islands 
where  they  flowed. 

Rome  scorns  to  be  called  a  denomination  ;  and  the  Church  of  England 
scorns  it  almost  as  much.  Indeed,  there  is  hardly  any  sect  that  relishes 
being  designated  as  a  denomination.  Each  one,  according  to  its  own  con- 
sciousness, is  the  be-all  and  the  end-all  of  the  matter.  Rome  has  her  ritual, 
vast  and  splendid,  uniform  and  elaborate,  spectacular  and  sacred.  The 
Church  of  England  has  hers  also,  not  so  vast  and  splendid,  not  so  uniform 
or  elaborate,  not  so  spectacular  or  sacred.  In  fact,  the  vague  hint  of  free 
thought  in  the  Enolish  Establishment  showed  itself  somewhat  from  the  first 
in  the  disposition  to  employ  variant  forms  of  worship. 

The  sects,  in  the  beginning,  were  nearly  all  rebels  against  ritual  in  what 
forms  soever.  But  as  soon  as  they  got  themselves  severally  established — 
with  perhaps  the  exception  of  the  Quakers — each  proceeded  to  get  for  itself 
a  poor,  humble  ritual  and  meager  hint  of  forms  ;  for  man,  being  human,  must 
have  his  forms  for  everything.  The  thing  without  a  form  in  human  matters 
seems  to  be  merely  nebulous.  Ever  since  the  beginning  of  the  dissenting 
insurrections  the  organizations  resulting  from  such  movements  have  more 
and  more  enlarged  and  strenorthened  their  forms,  so  that  from  the  extreme 
democracy  of  Quakerism,  up  through  all  the  lean  concerns  by  way  of  Pres- 
byterianism  to  the  Episcopal  Establishment,  and  through  it  to  Rome,  the 
tendency  has  been  to  reestablish  with  greater  or  less  elaboration  and  splen- 
dor those  very  ritualistic  conditions  that  were  cast  off  by  the  great  German 
rebellion  ao^ainst  the  mother  Church. 

Now,  at  the  time  of  which  we  speak,  namely,  the  years  1875-79,  the 
epoch  of  Mr.  Gladstone's  first  retirement,  the  question  of  how  much  ritual, 
precisely,  came,  as  we  have  said,  to  be  regarded  in  the  English   Establish- 


OUT    OF    OFFICE.  525 

ment  as  a  matter  of  the  greatest  moment.  There  was  a  Romeward  draught, 
and  a  draught  toward  the  Evangelicals.  The  two  forces  pulled  asunder,  and 
the  English  Church  was  distraught  thereby.  So  came  the  ritualistic  contro- 
versy in  which  Mr.  Gladstone  bore  a  conspicuous  part.  Just  after  his  retire- 
ment from  office  he  began  in  a  spirited  manner  to  compose  essays  on 
ritualism  and  the  Romanist  complications  that  had  thrust  themselves  so 
powerfully  upon  his  attention. 

Mr.  Gladstone  was  capable  of  being  surprised.  Rome  had  surprised 
him.  In  the  great  Irish  legislation  of  1869-71  he  had  thought  himself  to 
be  legislating  in  the  interest,  or  at  least  according  to  the  desires,  of  the 
Roman  Catholics.  Nearly  seven  eighths  of  the  Irish  people  were  of  this 
faith  and  order.  Mr.  Gladstone  thought  that  he  would  please  them  greatly 
with  his  Disestablishment  Bill  and  Irish  Land  Bill ;  but  he  found,  as  we 
suppose,  to  his  amazement,  that  he  had  pleased  them  not  at  all. 

The  Irish  bishops  and  the  Romanist  party  in  general  turned  about  and 
assailed  their  benefactor.  Meanwhile  the  ultra-Protestant  party  denounced 
him  and  slandered  him  for  his  alleged  treason  to  his  own  country  and  league 
with  Rome.  We  may  admit  that  the  treatment  to  which  he  was  subjected 
might  well  justify  the  high  spirit,  if  not  positive  animosity,  with  which  he  now 
assailed  the  Romanists  and  Romanizing  tendencies  of  the  age.  His  first 
essay  on  ritualism  was  published  in  the  October  number  of  the  Contempo- 
rary Revieiv  for  the  year  1874.  In  this  article  he  defined  the  thing  about 
which  he  was  writing  by  saying  that  ritualism  "  is  unwise,  undisciplined,  reac- 
tion from  poverty,  from  coldness,  from  barrenness,  from  nakedness  ;  it  is 
overlaying  purpose  with  adventitious  and  obstructive  incumbrance  ;  it  is 
departure  from  measure  and  from  harmony  in  the  annexation  of  appearance 
to  substance,  of  the  outward  to  the  inward  ;  it  is  the  caricature  of  the  beau- 
tiful ;  it  is  the  conversion  of  help  into  hindrances  ;  it  is  the  attempted  sub- 
stitution of  the  secondary  for  the  primary  aim,  and  the  real  failure  and 
paralysis  of  both." 

This  paragraph,  in  addition  to  being  a  clear  exposition  of  Gladstone's 
views  relative  to  the  subject-matter  of  the  contention,  is  a  happy  example  of 
his  unconquerable  disposition  to  employ  the  general  and  the  abstract,  to  the 
exclusion  of  the  concrete  and  the  direct  in  the  forms  of  speech.  From  the 
above  point  of  departure  the  writer  soon  reached  the  essence  of  the  dispute, 
and  charged  home  upon  the  opposite  party  with  the  greatest  spirit.  He 
gave  utterance  in  the  part  we  are  about  to  quote  to  sentiments  that  stung 
the  Roman  Catholics  to  the  quick. 

In  his  general  statement  the  statesman  said:  "There  is  a  question 
which  it  is  the  special  purpose  of  this  paper  to  suggest  for  consideration, 
by  my  fellow-Christians  generally,  which  is  more  practical,  and  of  greater 
importance,  as  it  seems  to  me,  and  has  far  stronger  claims  on  the  attention 


526  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E,    GLADSTONE. 

of  the  nation  and  of  the  rulers  of  the  Church  than  the  question  whether  a 
handful  of  the  clergy  are  or  are  not  engaged  in  an  utterly  hopeless  and 
visionary  effort  to  Romanize  the  Church  and  people  of  England.  At  no 
time  since  the  sanguinary  reign  of  Mary  has  such  a  scheme  been  possible. 
But,  if  it  had  been  possible  in  the  seventeenth  or  eighteenth  centuries,  it 
would  still  have  become  impossible  in  the  nineteenth ;  when  Rome  has  sub- 
stituted for  the  proud  boast  oi  semper  eadeni  a  policy  of  violence  and  change 
in  faith  ;  when  she  has  refurbished  and  paraded  anew  every  rusty  tool  she 
was  fondly  thought  to  have  disused  ;  when  no  one  can  become  her  convert 
without  renouncing  his  moral  and  mental  freedom  and  placing  his  civil 
lo)alty  and  duty  at  the  mercy  of  another;  and  when  she  has  equally  repudi- 
ated modern  thought  and  ancient  history.  I  cannot  persuade  myself  to  feel 
alarm  as  to  the  final  issue  of  her  crusades  in  England,  and  this,  although  I 
do  not  undervalue  her  great  powers  of  mischief" 

This  part  of  Mr.  Gladstone's  essay  had  the  effect  of  angering  the  Roman 
Catholics  not  a  little.  He  went  on  to  contend  that  the  ultimate  ritual  of 
the  Christian  Church  must  be  found  in  the  teaching  of  the  apostles.  The 
scriptural  origin  and  character  of  religious  forms  he  had  endeavored  to 
express  in  the  series  of  resolutions  which  he  had  offered  in  the  House  of 
Commons  not  lone  aero,  during  the  debate  on  the  bill  for  the  Regulation  of 
Public  Worship,     These  resolutions  he  now  incorporated  in  his  article. 

The  appearance  of  the  treatise  aroused  the  religionists  of  all  views  to 
heated  controversy.  Man}-  replies  were  published,  some  of  them  exceed- 
ingly intemperate.  The  contention  extended  so  far  that  Mr.  Gladstone 
published  a  second  article  in  the  same  periodical  for  July  of  1875.  ^^  ^^i^ 
he  carried  the  war  into  Africa,  and  rose  to  a  measure  of  belligerency  which 
he  did  not  often  display.  In  the  course  of  his  review  he  said  that  in  order 
to  remove  the  grounds  of  misapprehension  respecting  his  arguments  he 
would  express  them  all  in  the  form  of  theses,  and  would  make  these  the 
basis  of  whatever  he  should  say.  His  propositions,  five  in  number,  were  as 
follows : 

"  I.  The  Church  of  this  great  nation  is  worth  preserving,  and  for  that 
end  much  may  well  be  borne. 

"  2.  In  the  existing  state  of  minds  and  of  circumstances,  preserved  it 
cannot  be,  if  we  now  shift  its  balance  of  doctrinal  expression,  be  it  by  any 
alteration  of  the  prayer  book  (either  way)  in  contested  points,  or  be  it  by 
treating  rubrical  interpretations  of  the  matters  heretofore  most  sharply  con- 
tested on  the  basis  of  'doctrinal  significance.' 

"  3.  The  more  we  trust  to  moral  forces,  and  the  less  to  penal  proceed- 
ings (which  are  to  a  considerable  extent  exclusive  one  of  the  other),  the 
better  for  the  Establishment,  and  even  for  the  Church. 

"4.  If  litigation  is  to  be  continued,  and  to  remain,  within  the  bounds  of 


OUT    OF    OFFICE.  527 

safety,  it  is  highly  requisite  that  it  should  be  confined  to  the  repression  of 
such  proceedings  as  really  imply  unfaithtulness  to  the  national  religion. 

"5.  In  order  that  judicial  decisions  on  ceremonial  may  habitually  enjoy 
the  large  measure  of  authority,  finality,  and  respect,  which  attaches  in  gen- 
eral to  the  sentences  of  our  courts,  it  is  requisite  that  they  should  have  uni- 
form reo-ard  to  the  rules  and  results  of  full  historical  investigation,  and 
should,  if  possible,  allow  to  stand  over  for  the  future  matters  insufficiently 
cleared,  rather  than  decide  them  upon  partial  and  fragmentary  evidence." 

This  second  article,  so  strongly  controversial,  did  not  pour  oil  on  the 
waters.  The  author  found  it  necessary  to  carry  on  his  ecclesiastical  cam- 
paign against  Rome,  and  this  he  did  in  his  celebrated  pamphlets  on  The  Vat- 
ican Decrees,  to  which  publication  we  have  already  referred.  He  had  been 
challenged  to  produce  proof  of  the  truth  of  the  several  theses,  and  this  he 
proceeded  to  do.  He  dwelt  in  particular  upon  the  second  and  the  third 
proposition  ;  that  is,  that  the  Church  of  Rome  had  "  refurbished  and  paraded 
anew  every  rusty  tool  she  was  fondly  thought  to  have  disused ;  and  that  no 
one  could  now  become  her  convert  without  renouncing  his  moral  and  men- 
tal freedom  and  placing  his  civil  loyalty  and  duty  at  the  mercy  of  another." 
These  propositions  Mr.  Gladstone  proceeded  to  elaborate  and  to  fortify 
with  arguments  that  were  highly  edifying  to  those  who  were  of  his  opinion, 
and  equally  annoying  to  those  against  whom  they  were  directed. 

Nor  should  we  fail  to  keep  in  mind  the  gravamen  of  recent  offending 
on  the  part  of  Rome  which  was  the  issuance  five  years  previously  of  the 
dogma  of  infallibility — a  doctrine  which  must  needs  be  morally  offensive  to 
all  adherents  of  the  Church  of  England,  and  indeed  of  every  other  Church, 
save  only  Rome  herself  Mr.  Gladstone  attacked  the  dogma  in  a  mem- 
orable way.  One  of  his  principal  paragraphs  on  this  subject  was  as  follows  : 
"Absolute  obedience,  it  is  boldly  declared,  is  due  to  the  pope,  at  the  peril  of 
salvation,  not  alone  in  faith,  in  morals,  but  in  all  things  which  concern  the 
discipline  and  government  of  the  Church.  Thus  are  swept  into  the  papal 
net  wdiole  multitudes  of  facts,  whole  systems  of  government,  prevailing, 
though  in  different  degrees,  in  every  country  in  the  world.  Even  in  the 
United  States,  where  the  severance  between  Church  and  State  is  supposed 
to  be  complete,  a  long  catalogue  might  be  drawn  of  subjects  belonging  to 
the  domain  and  competency  of  the  State,  but  also  undeniably  affecting  the 
government  of  the  Church  ;  such  as,  by  w^ay  of  example,  marriage,  burial, 
education,  prison  discipline,  blasphemy,  poor  relief,  incorporation,  mortmain, 
religious  endowments,  vows  of  celibacy,  and  obedience. 

"  In  Europe  the  circle  is  wider,  the  points  of  contact  and  of  interlacing 
almost  innumerable.  But  on  all  matters  respecting  which  any  pope  may 
think  proper  to  declare  that  they  concern  either  faith,  or  morals,  or  the  gov- 
ernment, or  discipline  of  the  Church,  he  claims,  with  the  approval  of  a  council 


528  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

undoubtedly  ecumenical  in  the  Roman  sense,  the  absolute  obedience,  at  the 
peril  of  salvation,  of  every  member  of  his  communion.  It  seems  not  as 
yet  to  have  been  thought  wise  to  pledge  the  council  in  terms  to  the  Sylla- 
bus and  Encyclical.  That  achievement  is  probably  reserved  for  some  one 
of  its  sittings  yet  to  come.  In  the  meantime  it  is  well  to  remember  that 
this  claim  in  respect  of  all  things  affecting  the  discipline  and  government  of 
the  Church,  as  well  as  faith  and  conduct,  is  lodged  in  open  day  by  and  in 
the  reign  of  a  pontiff  who  has  condemned  free  speech,  free  writing,  a  free 
press,  toleration  of  nonconformity,  liberty  of  conscience,  the  study  of  civil 
and  philosophical  matters  in  independence  of  the  ecclesiastical  authority, 
marriage,  unless  sacramentally  contracted,  and  the  definition  by  the  State 
of  the  civil  rights  {jin-a)  of  the  Church  ;  who  has  demanded  for  the 
Church,  therefore,  the.  title  to  define  its  own  civil  rights,  together  with  a 
divine  right  to  civil  immunities  and  a  right  to  use  physical  force  ;  and  who 
has  also  proudly  asserted  that  the  popes  of  the  Middle  Ages,  with  their  coun- 
cils, did  not  invade  the  rights  of  princes;  as,  for  example,  Gregory  VII,  of 
the  Emperor  Henry  IV,  or  Pius  V,  in  performing  the  like  paternal  office  for 
Elizabeth." 

In  the  further  prosecution  of  his  argument  Mr.  Gladstone  came  to  close 
quarters  with  his  enemies.  He  made  for  them  a  sort  of  dilemma,  which, 
indeed,  it  would  have  been  difficult  for  them  then  or  ever  to  meet.  He 
demanded,  first,  a  demonstration  (from  the  Church  of  Rome)  that  neither 
in  the  name  of  faith,  nor  in  the  name  of  morals,  nor  in  the  name  of  the  orov- 
ernment  or  discipline  of  the  Church,  is  the  Pope  of  Rome  able,  by  virtue  of 
the  powers  asserted  for  him  by  the  Vatican  decree,  to  make  any  claim  upon 
those  who  adhere  to  his  communion,  of  such  a  nature  as  can  impair  the 
integrity  of  their  civil  allegiance  ;  or  else,  secondly,  that,  if  and  when  such 
claim  is  made,  it  will,  even  although  resting  on  the  definitions  of  the  \^ati- 
can,  be  repelled  and  rejected  ;  just  as  Bishop  Doyl,  when  he  was  asked  what 
the  Roman  Catholic  clergy  would  do  if  the  pope  intermeddled  with  their 
religion,  replied  frankly,  "The  consequence  would  be  that  we  should  oppose 
him  by  every  means  in  our  power,  even  by  the  exercise  of  our  spiritual 
authority." 

Such  was  the  alternative,  or  rather  the  dilemma,  in  which  Mr.  Gladstone 
placed  his  antagonists.  Of  course  no  assurances  could  be  given  by  them 
under  either  proposition;  from  which  Mr.  Gladstone  proceeded  to  make  cer- 
tain deductions  :  "  First,  that  the  pope,  authorized  by  his  council,  claims  for 
himself  the  domain  of  faith,  of  morals,  of  all  that  concerns  the  government 
and  discipline  of  the  Church  ;  second,  that  he,  in  like  manner,  claims  the 
power  of  deterniining  the  limits  of  those  domains  ;  third,  that  he  does  not 
sever  them,  by  any  acknowledged  or  intelligible  line,  from  the  domains  of 
civil  duty  and  allegiance ;  and  fourth,  that  he  therefore  claims,  and  claims 


OUT    OF    OFFICE. 


529 


from  the  month  of  July,  1870,  onward,  with  plenary  authority,  from  every 
convert  and  member  of  his  Church,  that  he  shall  '  place  his  loyalty  and  civil 
duty  at  the  mercy  of  another,'  that  other  being  himself." 

Mr.  Gladstone  went  on  with  great  earnestness  to  demonstrate  that 
these  hurtful  deductions  relative  to  the  policy  of  the  papacy  were  material 
considerations  of  the  greatest  importance.  He  said  that  he  himself  for 
thirty  years,  under  changing  conditions  and  in  many  relations  of  life,  had 
labored  to  promote  and  establish  the  civil  rights  of  the  Roman  Catholics 
in  the  British  empire.  He  and  his  party  had  labored  to  this  end.  Up  to 
the  time  of  the  publication  of  the  Vatican  decrees  the  opinions  of  Roman- 
ists in  matters  of  civil  liberty  had  been  free.  Now  they  were  free  no  longer. 
Up  to  that  time  he  had  felt  that  the  government  of  Great  Britain  ought  to 
secure  equal  rights  to  Ireland,  that  country  being  Catholic.  Hence  the 
Irish  legislation  which  he  had  promoted.  And  for  what  good?  How  had 
the  Liberal  party  been  treated  in  repayment  for  its  acts  of  justice  and 
liberality  } 

In  the  next  place  the  writer  showed  that  the  only  progress  made  by 
Roman  Catholicism  had  been  a  certain  extension  of  its  influen(^e  among-  the 
upper  classes  of  society.  Probably  the  women  were  more  than  ever  subject 
to  the  influence  of  the  Catholic  Church.  The  Pope  of  Rome  did  not  of 
late  control  more  souls  than  formerly,  but  he  controlled  more  acres.  As  for 
himself,  Mr.  Gladstone  said  that  he  should  hereafter  be  guided,  as  thereto- 
fore, by  the  principle  of  equal  rights  for  all — this  without  regard  to  religious 
differences.  He  desired  the  government  to  do  the  same,  and  hoped  that  the 
members  of  the  Roman  communion  would  come  under  the  benefit  of  this 
liberal  policy.  He  was  in  hopes  that  the  State  would,  as  theretofore,  leave 
the  domain  of  religious  conscience  free  and  restrict  its  activities  to  its  own 
sphere.  Let  the  State  allow  no  private  caprice  or  any  foreign  arrogance  to 
dictate  to  it  in  matters  affecting  the  proper  discharge  of  its  duties.  "  Eng- 
land expects  every  man  to  do  his  duty,"  said  he,  and  he  thought  that  none 
were  better  able  than  the  Liberal  party  to  exact  the  performance  of  duty 
from  all. 

Then  Mr.  Gladstone  continued:  "Strong  the  state  of  the  United 
Kingdom  has  always  been  in  material  strength,  and  its  moral  panoply  is 
now,  we  may  hope,  pretty  complete.  It  is  not  then  for  the  dignity  of  the 
crown  and  people  of  the  United  Kingdom  to  be  diverted  from  a  path  which 
they  have  deliberately  chosen,  and  which  it  does  not  rest  with  all  the  myr- 
midons of  the  apostolic  chamber  either  openly  to  obstruct  or  secretly  to 
undermine.  It  is  rightfully  to  be  expected,  it  is  greatly  to  be  desired,  that 
the  Roman  Catholics  of  this  country  should  do  in  the  nineteenth  century 
what  their  forefathers  of  England,  except  a  handful  of  emissaries,  did  in  the 
sixteenth,  when  they  were  marshaled  in  resistance  to  the  Armada,  and  in 
34 


530  LIFE    AND    Tl.MES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

the  seventeenth,  when,  in  spite  of  the  papal  chair,  they  sat  in  the  House  of 
Lords  under  the  oath  of  allegiance.  That  which  they  a're  entitled  to  desire 
we  are  entitled  also  to  expect ;  indeed,  to  say  we  did  not  expect  it  would, 
in  my  judgment,  be  the  true  way  of  conveying  an  '  insult '  to  those  con- 
cerned. 

"In  this  expectation  we  may  be  partially  disappointed.  Should  those 
to  whom  I  appeal  thus  unhappily  come  to  bear  witness  in  their  own  per- 
sons to  the  decay  of  sound,  manly,  true  life  in  their  Church,  it  will  be  their 
loss  more  than  ours.  The  inhabitants  of  those  islands,  as  a  whole,  are  stable, 
though  sometimes  credulous  and  excitable ;  resolute,  though  sometimes 
boastful ;  and  a  strong-headed  and  stout-hearted  race  will  not  be  hindered, 
either  by  latent  or  by  avowed  dissents  due  to  the  foreign  influence  of  a  caste, 
from  the  accomplishment  of  its  mission  in  the  world." 

The  general  effect  of  this  publication,  made  in  the  years  1874-75,  was 
to  arouse  the  Romanist  party  to  a  high  degree  of  antagonism.  Mr.  Glad- 
stone's pamphlet  was  a  challenge  thrown  down  to  the  oldest  and  most 
powerful  Christian  organization  in  the  world.  Replies  began  to  be  made  on 
every  hand.  Cardinals  Manning  and  Newman  entered  the  lists  against  the 
ex-prime  minister.  Archbishops  and  bishops  published  their  answers  galore. 
In  England,  on  the  Continent,  even  to  the  gates  of  Rome,  the  echoes  of  the 
controversy  were  heard.  In  a  few  instances  defenders  of  Mr.  Gladstone's 
publication  were  found  in  the  enemy's  ranks.  This  is  equivalent  to  saying 
that  there  were  Roman  Catholics  of  high  estate  and  character  who  did  not 
support  the  decree  of  infallibility.  Not  a  few  pointed  out  the  dangerous 
extremes  and  ultimate  catastrophe  to  which  the  promulgation  and  accept- 
ance of  that  dogma  would  lead. 

Mr.  Gladstone  for  his  part  returned  to  the  controversy  and  published  a 
second  paper,  under  the  title  of  Vaticanisvi :  An  Ansiver  to  Reproofs  and 
Replies.  In  this  he. said  that  it  had  not  been  his  purpose  to  traduce  the 
Roman  Catholic  Church,  but  merely  to  show  that  the  Vatican  decrees  did 
presume  to  claim  for  the  pope  the  right  of  supreme  dominion  over  the 
loyalty  and  civil  duty  of  the  citizenship  of  all  countries.  This  claim  must 
be  resisted.  He  admitted  that  in  the  hearts  of  men  the  papal  decrees  were 
received  with  varying  degrees  of  submissiveness,  but  that  they  were  received 
at  all  was  a  just  cause  of  alarm  and  of  opposition  on  the  part  of  patriots 
throughout  the  world.  He  next  referred  to  the  secession  of  Cardinal  John 
Henry  Newman  from  the  Church  of  England  and  its  calamitous  results  to 
Protestantism,  He  thought  that  the  defection  of  the  pious  and  scholarly 
Newman  was  a  more  serious  thinor  to  the  Church  of  Enp-land  than  the 
evangelical  insurrection  of  Wesley  and  his  followers.  Nevertheless  he  could 
not  accept  Dr.  Newman's  answer,  though  he  admitted  that  the  answer  was 
honestly  given.     The   fact   that   such  an  answer  had  been  prepared  by  one 


OUT    OF    OFFICE.  53  I 

who  had  been  the  light  and  ornament  of  the  English  Church  was  sufficient 
cause  for  anxiety. 

Mr.  Gladstone  then  continued  by  the  reassertion  and  further  develop- 
ment of  the  doctrines  announced  in  his  former  pamphlet.  He  set  forth  the 
proofs  to  establish  certain  general  conclusions  at  which  he  had  arrived. 
These  were,  first,  that  the  position  of  the  Roman  Catholics  had  been  altered 
by  the  decrees  of  the  Vatican  on  papal  infallibility  and  in  obedience  to  the 
pope;  secondly,  that  the  extreme  claims  of  the  Middle  Ages  had  been  sanc- 
tioned, and  had  been  revived  without  the  warrant  or  excuse  which  might  in 
those  ages  have  been  shown  for  them  ;  thirdly,  that  the  claims  asserted  by 
the  pope  were  such  as  to  place  civil  allegiance  at  his  mercy  ;  and,  fourthly, 
that  the  State  and  people  of  the  United  Kingdom  had  a  right  to  rely  on 
the  assurances  they  had  received,  that  papal  infallibility  was  not  and  could 
not  become  an  article  of  faith  in  the  Roman  Church,  and  that  the 
obedience  due  to  the  pope  was  limited  by  laws  independent  of  his 
will.  These  propositions  the  author  sustained  with  great  ability  and  in 
a  manner  much  more  temperate  than  had  been  shown  by  many  of  his 
opponents. 

The  period  here  before  us  in  Mr.  Gladstone's  life  was  occupied  in  a 
great  measure  with  intellectual  activities.  The  statesman  spent  the  greater 
part  of  his  time  on  his  estate  of  Hawarden.  It  was  at  this  time  that  he  ac- 
quired hischaracter  of  a  rusticated  philosopher  amongthe  nations.  Hawarden 
began  to  be  already  a  place  to  be  visited  and  admired,  not  for  itself,  but  for 
the  sturdy  genius  of  a  man  old  in  years,  but  not  old  in  bodily  or  intellectual 
vigor.  Gladstone  at  this  time  began  to  be  a  woodchopper  in  public  report. 
He  was  more  than  ever  admired  for  his  democratic  manners,  for  the  sim- 
plicity of  his  character,  for  his  stalwart  personality.  It  was  known  hence- 
forth that  the  sage  of  Hawarden  rose  with  the  morning  light ;  that  he  was 
often  abroad  in  shirt  sleeves,  with  his  ax,  felling  a  tree  or  chopping  wood, 
more  for  the  exercise  than  for  the  pursuit.  A  temperate,  cool-headed  man  this, 
who  had  little  thought  of  ending  his  activities  at  so  early  a  period  In  his  life, 
and  no  thought  at  all  of  even  the  possibility  of  consuming  his  remaining 
energies  in  Idleness  and  the  dissipations  of  great  old  men. 

As  we  have  said,  this  was  a  time  of  vigorous  Intellectual  activity.  The 
larger  part  of  the  statesman's  energy  was  now  devoted  to  his  writings.  One 
great  essay  followed  another.  The  greater  part  of  them  had  for  their  themes 
some  phase  of  the  religious  controversy  that  was  on  in  the  country.  Be- 
sides the  pamphlets  on  "  The  Church  of  England  and  Ritualism,"  which  ap- 
peared in  the  Contemporary  Review  for  October,  1874,  and  July,  1875,  ^1^^- 
Gladstone  soon  afterward — namely.  In  October,  1875 — contributed  to  the 
Church  of  England  Quarterly  Review  an  article  on  Italy  and  her  Church, 
which,  like  Its  predecessors,  evoked  several   controversial  papers  In  answer. 


532 


LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 


WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE    IN    HIS    STUDY    AT    HAWARDEN. 


OUT    OF    OFFICE.  533 

Then,  in  the  Contemporary  Rcvieiv  for  June  of  1876,  came  another  remark- 
able study  on  "  The  Courses  of  Religious  Thought." 

In  March  of  1877  the  author  followed  with  a  remarkable  article  on  the 
"  Influence  of  Authority  on  Matters  of  Opinion,"  which  first  appeared  in  The 
Nineteenth  Century.  To  this  also  several  replies  were  published,  and  the 
author  returned  to  the  theme  with  what  he  called  a  "  Rejoinder  on  Authority 
in  Matters  of  Opinion."  This  appeared  in  The  Nineteenth  Centicry  for  July, 
1877.  In  the  following  year  he  published  one  of  his  strongest  reviews, 
under  the  title  of  "  The  Sixteenth  Century  Arraigned  Before  the  Nine- 
teenth :  A  Study  of  the  Reformation."  This  contribution  appeared  in  the 
Contemporary  Review  for  October,  1878.  Finally,  in  July  of  1879,  Mr.  Glad- 
stone published  in  the  British  Quarterly  Reviciu  an  able  study,  entitled 
"  The  Evangelical  Movement:  Its  Parentage,  Progress,  and  Issue."  The 
mere  enumeration  of  these  great  studies  may  serve  to  show  the  American 
reader  the  extent  and  persistency  of  Mr.  Gladstone's  inquiries  into  the 
religio-civil  questions  of  the  times. 

But  the  reviews  to  which  we  have  referred  did  not  by  any  means  include 
all  of  the  literary  work  of  Mr.  Gladstone  during  the  time  of  the  Conserv- 
ative ascendency  (1875-80).  He  prosecuted  his  work  in  other  directions, 
as  well  as  along  the  lines  of  religious  controversy.  In  the  Quarterly  Review 
for  October,  1874,  appeared  an  article  on  "  Bishop  Patteson,"  which  was  from 
the  pen  of  Mr.  Gladstone.  In  July  of  1876  he  published  in  the  Church  of 
England  Quarterly  Review  a  contribution  on  the  "  Life  and  Work  of  Dr. 
Norman  Macleod,"  and  in  the  same  month  appeared,  in  the  Quarterly  Re- 
vie7v,  his  celebrated  critique  of  Macaulay,  to  which  we  shall  hereafter  refer. 
In  the  following  December  there  appeared  in  the  Contemporary  Rcvieiv 
Mr.  Gladstone's  article  on  "The  Hellenic  Factor  in  the  Eastern  Problem," 
and  this  was  followed  in  May  of  1877,  by  an  able  study  which  appeared  in 
The  Nijietccnth  Ce7itu7y,  under  the  title  of  "  Montenegro,  or  Tsarnagora: 
A  Sketch."  Then  came,  in  August  of  the  same  year,  a  great  paper  on  "The 
Aggression  of  Egypt,  and  Freedom  in  the  East,"  which  was  published  in 
The  Nineteenth  Centitry.  To  these  historical  studies  we  must  add,  as  be- 
longing to  this  period,  the  "  Life  of  the  Prince  Consort,"  which  appeared  in 
the  Church  of  England  Quarterly  Review  for  January,  1878.  In  the  pre- 
vious November  Mr.  Gladstone  had  published  in  The  Nineteenth  Ce7itury 
his  political  article  on  "  The  County  Franchise,  and  Mr.  Lowe  Thereon." 
This  was  followed  by  another  on  the  same  subject,  entitled  "  Last  Words  on 
the  County  Franchise,"  which  appeared  in  The  Nineteenth  Centiiry  for  Jan- 
uary, 1878.  But  the  last  zuords  did  not  prove  to  be  the  last,  for  in  July  fol- 
lowing Mr.  Gladstone  contributed  to  "  A  Modern  Symposium,"  in  the  same 
magazine,  what  he  called  "  Postscriptum  on  the  County  Franchise,"  of  which, 
or  for  which,  the  author,  in  his  published  works,  offers  the  following  apology  : 


534  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OE    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

"It  was  an  inconsistency  to  write  this  postscript  after  my  'Last  Words.' 
lUit  the  soft  and  silken  cord  with  which  the  editor  of  The  Nineteenth  Cen- 
tury guides  his  contributors  usually  draws  them  wdiithersoever  he  will. — \V. 
E.  G.,  1878."  Nor  did  the  statesman,  in  the  midst  of  his  intellectual  indus- 
tries, forget  America  and  the  Americans.  In  September  of  1878  he  pub- 
lished in  the  North  American  Revieiv  his  article  entitled  "  Kin  beyond  Sea." 
This  was  devoted  to  ourselves  and  our  institutions.  The  temper  of  it  may 
be  understood  from  the  poetical  quotation  with  which  it  begins: 

"^Vhen  Love  unites,  Avide  space  divides  in  vain, 
And  hands  may  clasp  across  the  spreading  main." 

Out  of  all  this  may  be  gathered  an  adequate  general  view  of  the  Glad- 
stonian  activities  at  that  period  which  is  covered  by  the  greater  number  of 
his  general  essays,  namely,  the  years  iS 75-80,  inclusive.  These  essays  con- 
stitute the  major  part  of  the  seven  volumes  which  were  subsequently  gath- 
ered by  the  author  and  republished,  with  notes  and  additions,  under  the  title 
of  Gleanings  of  Past  Years. 

It  was  durino-  the  Conservative  ascendencv — which  micjht  almost  be 
defined  as  the  reign  of  Benjamin  Disraeli — corresponding,  of  course,  with 
the  epoch  of  Mr.  Gladstone's  retirement,  that  the  Eastern  Question  again 
appeared  as  a  disturbing  force  in  the  affairs  of  Europe.  It  showed  itself 
in  several  conspicuous  forms.  Now  it  was  declared  as  an  element  of  discord 
underlying  the  outrages  and  turbulence  in  Herzegovina.  Now  it  showed 
Itself  in  a  war  in  Afghanistan.  Now  it  declared  itself  still  more  distinctly  in 
the  Turco-Russian  W  ar  of  1877-78. 

The  whole  of  Europe  w^as  concerned  in  these  matters,  and  England,  in 
particular,  had  a  part  in  them.  The  question  was,  in  a  word,  what  it  is  to- 
day, and  that  is,  what  Europe  shall  do  with  the  unspeakable  Turk.  Mr. 
Gladstone  held  and  expressed  the  view  that  the  Turk  ought  to  be  expelled 
from  Europe  bag  and  baggage — the  last  three  words  passing  into  a  colloquial 
proverb  expressive  of  a  policy.  Great  Britain,  as  a  government,  however, 
w^as  a  party  to  the  compact  for  upholding  the  Ottoman  power  in  Europe, 
and  the  Conservative  party  was  especially  committed  to  this  method. 

If  Mr.  Disraeli  found  cause  to  complain  of  Gladstone  that  the  latter,  in 
1868,  threw  suddenly  upon  him  the  Irish  question,  seven  centuries  old,  he 
had  again,  in  1875,  cause  to  complain  that  history  had  brought  to  the  door 
the  Eastern  Question  once  more  in  a  bag  out  of  Herzegovina.  In  that 
country  there  was  an  insurrection  against  the  Turkish  government.  Her- 
zegovina was  under  the  dominion  of  Turkish  pashas  who  were  so  many 
Mohammedan  despots.  The  trouble  began  in  1875,  and  by  the  beginning 
of  the  following  year  culminated  in  actual  war.  Count  Andrassy,  State 
representative  of  Austria,  thereupon  drew  up  a  scheme  of  reforni  and  sent  the 


OUT    OF    OFFICE. 


535 


same  to  the  powers,  by  whom  it  was  ratified  and' submitted  to  the  suhan, 
who  accepted  it.  But  in  a  few  months  a  revolt  broke  out  in  Bulgaria, 
where  the  Bashi-bazouks  loosed  themselves  and  committed  horrors  unspeak- 
able in  civilized  language. 

Before   the   middle   of  the  year  the  Emperor  of  Russia  and  his  prime 


WILLIAM    I,    EMPEROR   OF    GERMANY. 


minister  went  to  Berlin,  whither  Emperor  William  of  Germany  and  Bis- 
marck had  come,  to  discuss  the  Eastern  Question,  and  where  they  did  dis- 
cuss it  in  a  manner  looking  to  hard  terms  for  Turkey.  But  Great  Britain 
dissented,  and  the  Bulgarian  insurrection  was  suppressed.  At  this  juncture 
Abdul  Aziz,  Sultan  of  the  Turks,  was  deposed  and  assassinated.  Mr.  Dis- 
raeli, when  interrogated  in  the  House  of  Commons,  said  that,  owing  to  the 
end  of  the   Bulg-arian  revolt,  the  oovernmental  memorandum  of  disag-ree- 


536  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

ment   woukl   not  be   presented,  and  that   a  result  would  be  reached  in  the 
way  of  settlement  which  would  be  honorable  to  England. 

It  was  at  the  opening  of  Parliament  in  1876  that  the  remarkable  per- 
sonage at  the  head  of  the  government  was  enabled  to  rise  and  announce  that 
Victoria,  by  the  grace  of  God  Queen  of  the  United  Kingdom  of  Great 
Britain  and  Ireland,  had  added  to  her  royal  titles  that  of  Empress  of  India. 
There  was  opposition  from  the  Liberal  side,  and  particularly  from  the 
radical  ranks,  to  the  proclamation,  and  it  was  agreed  that  the  new  honor 
and  title  of  the  queen  should  not  be  employed  in  the  home  kingdom  of 
Great  Britain,  but  only  abroad;  that  is,  in  India  itself 

About  this  time  the  newspaper  reports  which  were  sent  from  Bulgaria 
to  London  aroused  the  country  to  a  pitch  of  excitement.  It  appeared  that 
the  ravages  in  that  country  were  beyond  description.  Such  horrors  had  not 
been  committed  in  modern  times.  One  of  the  stories  was  to  the  effect  that 
forty  innocent  girls  had  been  confined  in  a  straw  loft  and  there  burnt  to 
death.  Possibly  the  reports  were  exaggerated  ;  but  the  disposition  of  Mr. 
Disraeli  to  put  them  aside  and  to  perpetrate  witty  sayings  on  such  a  subject 
in  the  House  of  Commons  was  well  calculated  to  arouse  public  indignation 
and  to  contribute  to  his  overthrow.  The  Bulgarian  trouble  extended  into 
Servia,  and  then  into  Montenegro.  Nor  need  we  here  repeat  the  story  of 
the  war  that  ensued. 

Mr.  Gladstone  reappeared  at  this  juncture  in  the  House  of  Commons 
and  interrogated  the  government  about  the  sending  of  a  fleet  to  Besika 
Bay.  The  prime  minister  replied  that  the  fleet  was  not  intended  to  uphold 
the  Ottoman  power,  but  to  protect  British  interests.  He  also  said  that  the 
Berlin  memorandum  could  not  be  justly  condemned  as  the  cause  of  war. 
He  alleged  that  the  other  powers  were  at  one  with  Great  Britain,  and  that 
the  policy  of  neutrality  would  be  upheld.  He  thought  that  the  reports 
about  the  atrocities  in  the  East  had  been  exag-eerated.  He  said  that  the 
government  had  no  official  information  respecting  them,  and  that  in  any 
event  Turkey  was  not  the  especial  protegd  of  England.  Finally,  it  was  the 
business  as  well  as  the  policy  of  Great  Britain  to  maintain  the  British 
empire,  and  that  the  government  would  do,  whatever  conditions  might  arise. 
This  speech  was  delivered  on  the  nth  of  August,  1876,  and  on  the  follow- 
ing day  it  was  announced  in  the  English  newspapers  that  Benjamin  Disraeli 
was  to  be  immediately  raised  to  the  peerage,  with  the  title  of  the  Earl  of 
Beaconsfield  !     The  prime  minister  was  in  favor  with  the  crown. 

It  was  on  the  27th  of  August,  1876,  that  Mr.  Disraeli  received  the 
overwhelming  honor  to  which  no  doubt  he  had  looked  forward  for  years. 
He  had  already,  on  a  previous  occasion,  accepted  the  title  of  duchess  for 
Mrs.  Disraeli,  but  as  for  himself  his  time  had  not  then  come.  Now,  at  the 
age  of  seventy-two,  with   only  a  few  remaining  years  before  him  and  with 


OUT    OF    OFFICE. 


537 


international  fame  behind,  he  accepted  the  title  of  Earl  of  Beaconsfield, 
which  was  equivalent  to  announcing  his  retirement  from  the  heated  arena 
of  British  politics.  He  issued  to  his  constituents  on  the  occasion  a  farewell 
address  in  which  he  said  :  "  Throughout  my  public  life  I  have  aimed  at  two 
chief  results.     Not  insensible  to  the  principle  of  progress,  I  have  endeavored 


EARL   OF   BEACONSFIELD. 


to  reconcile  change  with  that  respect  for  tradition  which  is  one  of  the  main 
elements  of  our  social  strength,  and  in  external  affairs  I  have  endeavored 
to  develop  and  strengthen  our  empire,  believing  that  combination  of 
achievement  and  responsibility  elevates  the  character  and  condition  of  a 
people." 

This  last  expression  of  the  statesman  is  to  be  read  and  understood  in 
the  light  of  the  fact  that  it  was  under  his  auspices,  and  somewhat  against 
the  prejudices  of  the  progressive  party  in  England,  that  Queen  Victoria 
was  made  Empress  of  India. 


538  LIFE    AM)    TIMES    OF    WILIJAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

As  to  the  complications  in  eastern  ICurope,  news  from  that  quarter  of 
the  world  grew  more  and  more  portentous.  Mr.  W.  Baring,  an  agent  of  the 
British  government,  made  an  official  report  in  which  the  stories  about  the 
outrages  in  Bulgaria  were  authenticated.  Mr.  Baring  showed  that  as  many 
as  twelve  thousand  people  had  perished  miserably  by  fire  and  sword  in  the 
single  province  of  Philippopolis.  At  Batak  a  massacre  had  been  perpe- 
trated the  like  of  which  had  hardly  been  known  since  the  Crusades.  More 
than  a  thousand  people  took  refuge  in  a  church,  where  they  were  shut  up 
by  the  Bashi-bazouks,  who  climbed  to  the  roof  and  fired  the  building  above 
and  within.  The  horror  that  ensued  may  never  be  described.  The  victims 
of  the  atrocity  were  burned  to  death  and  left  in  a  blackened  mass  in  the 
ruins. 

The  story  of  these  deeds  created  a  shudder  of  detestation  in  Great 
Britain,  and  the  anger  of  the  nation  was  kindled  not  a  little  against  the 
Turks.  In  Mr.  Gladstone's  pamphlet,  Bulgarian  Horrors  and  the  Ques- 
tion of  tJie  East,  he  set  forth  the  three  principal  objects  which  Great  Britain 
should  follow  in  bringing  the  Turkish  atrocities  to  a  speedy  end.  These 
were,  first,  to  put  a  stop  to  the  anarchical  misrule  and  abominable  intrigues 
and  lawlessness  of  the  Turks  in  Bulgaria  ;  second,  to  make  provision  against 
the  recurrence  of  such  outrages  by  exempting  Bulgaria,  as  well  as  Bosnia 
and  Herzegovina,  from  the  further  rule  of  the  Turkish  government;  third, 
to  redeem  by  such  measures  the  compromised  honor  of  Great  Britain,  who 
had  demanded  much  and  pledged  much,  but  thus  far  obtained  nothing  in 
the  way  of  protection  for  the  Christian  subjects  of  the  porte. 

Mr.  Gladstone  urged  that  the  British  government,  which  had  been 
workino-  in  one  direction,  should  now  work  in  another,  and  that  other  should 
look  to  the  total  extinction  of  the  executive  power  of  the  Ottoman  empire 
in  Bulgaria.  He  added  :  "  Let  the  Turks  now  carry  away  their  abuses  in 
the  only  possible  manner,  namely,  by  carrying  off  themselves.  Their  Zap- 
tiehs  and  their  Mudirs,  their  Bimbashis  and  their  Yuzbachis,  their  Kaima- 
kams  and  their  Pashas,  one  and  all,  bag  and  baggage,  shall,  I  hope,  clear  out 
from  the  province  they  have  desolated  and  profaned."  Mr.  Gladstone  after- 
ward explained  that  his  demand  for  the  total  retirement  of  the  Turks  "  bag 
and  baggage"  from  the  scene  of  their  crimes  had  respect  only  to  the  civil, 
the  executive,  and  the  political  machinery  of  government,  and  not  to  the 
Turkish  people  themselves.  They  had  a  right  to  remain,  but  not  to  govern, 
or  rather  misgovern,  any  longer. 

What  we  here  describe  happened  in  the  year  1876.  While  our  Cen- 
tennial Exposition  at  Philadelphia  was  on  in  full  grandeur  Mr.  Gladstone, 
following  up  his  war  cry,  made  a  great  speech  to  his  constituents  at  Black- 
heath.  He  conipared  the  atrocities  of  modern  history  with  those  recently 
committed  b)-  the  Turks,  making  it  appear  that  the  former  were  no  more 


OUT    OF    OFFICE. 


539 


than  a  cupful  of  crime  to  the  horrid  deluge  of  the  latter.  He  said  that  it 
was  the  duty  of  the  powers  to  prescribe  at  once  to  the  Turks  under  what 
conditions  they  should  hereafter  exercise  their  rights  in  the  suffering  prov- 
inces. Speaking  as  if  to  the  offenders,  he  said  :  "  You  shall  receive  a  rea- 
sonable tribute;  you  shall  retain  your  titular  sovereignty;  your  empire  shall 
not  be  invaded  ;  but  never  again  while  the  years  roll  their  course,  so  far  as 
it  is  in  our  power  to  determine,  never  again  shall  the  hand  of  violence  be 
raised  by  you  ;  never  again  shall  the  dire  refinements  of  cruelty  be  devised 
by  you  for  the  sake  of  making  mankind  miserable  in  Bulgaria." 

Mr.  Gladstone  was  insistent  that  all  civilized  Europe  should  act 
together  in  enforcing  these  demands.  He  thought,  however,  that  of  all  the 
powers  Russia  and  England  were  called  in  particular  to  support  the 
cause  of  the  suffering  Christians  in  the 
Turkish  provinces.  He  said  that  he  did 
not  suppose  Russia  to  be  more  exempt 
than  other  countries  from  the  influences 
of  selfishness  and  ambition  ;  but  he  was 
sure  she,  like  the  others,  had  the  pulse 
of  the  common  humanity  which  was  throb- 
bing in  all.  This  pulse  was  beating 
strongly,  almost  ungovernably,  among  the 
Russian  people.  Then  he  continued:  "Upon 
the  concord  and  hearty  cooperation — not 
upon  a  mere  hollow  truce  between  England 
and  Russia,  but  upon  their  concord  and 
hearty,  cordial  cooperation — depends  a 
good  settlement  of  this  question.  Their 
power  is  immense.  The  power  of  Russia  by 
land  for  acting  upon  these  countries  as  against  Turkey  is  perfectly  resistless ; 
the  power  of  England  by  sea  is  scarcely  less  important  at  this  moment.  For, 
I  ask  you,  what  would  be  the  condition  of  the  Turkish  armies  If  the  British 
admiral  now  in  Besika  Bay  were  to  inform  the  government  of  Constantinople 
that  from  that  hour  until  atonement  had  been  made — until  punishment  had 
descended,  until  justice  had  been  vindicated — not  a  man,  nor  a  ship,  nor  a 
boat  should  cross  the  waters  of  the  Bosporus,  or  the  cloudy  Euxine,  or  the 
bright  yEgean,  to  carry  aid  to  the  Turkish  troops.?" 

This  speech  at  Blackheath  may  be  regarded  as  the  reappearance  of  Mr, 
Gladstone  in  public  life  after  more  than  tw^o  years  of  obscuration.  He  per- 
ceived that  another  struggle  was  coming,  and  that  a  governmental  policy  had 
to  be  determined.  Mr.  Disraeli  (now  Lord  Beaconsfield)  also  understood  this 
fact,  and  found  himself  on  the  defensive.  He  tried  to  ward  off  the  conse- 
quences of  Mr.  Gladstone's  attack  and  of  the  rising  sentiment  of  the  country 


:J 


ABDUL    HAMID-KHAN    H, 

THE   NEW   SULTAN    OF   TURKEY. 


540  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

against  his  policy.  He  went  so  far  as  to  intimate  that  the  utterances 
and  general  course  pursued  by  the  Liberals  were  as  anarchical  and  withal  as 
bad  as  the  Bulgarian  atrocities— an  expression  belonging  to  the  sphere  of 
Tpo\\t\c?i\  persijiage  and  falsehood  rather  than  to  the  sphere  of  statesmanship 
and  truth. 

Meanwhile  Russia  stood  impatiently  with  drawn  sword,  menacing  the 
Turkish  borders.  The  porte,  on  the  ist  of  November,  1876,  agreed  to  an 
armistice  of  eight  weeks,  and  the  czar,  on  the  following  day,  agreed  with 
the  English  ambassador  at  Constantinople  to  maintain  the  statics  quo, 
except  so  far  as  the  occupation  by  Russian  forces  of  a  part  of  Bulgaria. 
Meanwhile,  a  week  later,  Lord  Beaconsfield  at  a  ministerial  banquet  gave 
utterance  to  sentiments  which  encouraged  the  czar  to  believe  that  he  would 
be  permitted  by  the  powers  to  proceed  independently  to  the  chastisement 
of  the  Turks. 

The  powers  had  sent  their  representatives,  or  at  least  nominated  them, 
to  a  conference  at  Constantinople,  and  thither  the  ambassadors  repaired, 
arriving  in  the  early  part  of  December.  The  representative  of  Great 
Britain  was  the  Marquis  of  Salisbury.  The  Liberal  party  in  England  was 
now  abroad  by  its  representatives  discussing  the  condition  of  Eastern 
affairs,  and  urging  the  government  to  unite  with  the  powers  in  suppressing 
the  Turkish  outrages.  In  pursuance  of  this  plan  a  great  meeting  was  held 
in  St.  James's  Hall,  on  the  8th  of  December,  1876,  at  which  several  of  the 
most  distinguished  publicists  of  Great  Britain  delivered  addresses.  Among 
these  was  Mr.  Gladstone,  who  made  on  the  occasion  a  remarkable  speech, 
saying,  in  the  first  place,  that  it  was  not  his  intention  or  the  intention  of 
those  whom  he  represented  to  embarrass  the  government,  but  rather  to  con- 
vince the  ofovernment  that  it  was  actinof,  and  had  for  a  vear  been  actinof,  in 
direct  opposition  to  the  will  of  the  English  people.  The  prime  minister,  in 
his  public  utterances,  had  seemed  utterly  oblivious  to  the  fact  that  England 
had  any  duties  to  perform  with  respect  to  the  Christians  of  the  Turkish 
provinces.  More  recently  Lord  Beaconsfield  had  admitted  that  there  were 
such  duties  to  ,be  performed.  Sir  Stafford  Northcote  had  made  a  similar 
admission. 

The  speaker  said  that  he  hoped  the  instructions  of  Lord  Salisbury  at 
Constantinople  were  not  accordant  with  the  sentiment  which  had  generally 
been  expressed  by  her  majesty's  government.  He  also  greatly  hoped  that 
the  conference  at  Constantinople  would  demand  the  future  independence  of 
the  Turkish  provinces  and  the  security  for  their  exemption  against  further 
injustice  and  outrage.  All  this  was  no  longer  a  privilege  to  England,  but 
her  solemn  duty.  "It  is  a  case,"  said  Mr.  Gladstone,  "  of  positive  obliga- 
tion, and,  under  the  stringent  pressure  of  that  obligation,  I  say  that,  if  at 
length   long-suffering  and   long-oppressed    humanity   in   these  provinces   is 


1 


OUT    OF    OFFICE.  54I 

lifting  itself  from  the  ground,  and  beginning  to  contemplate  the  heavens,  it 
is  our  business  to  assist  the  work.  It  is  our  business  to  acknowledofe  the 
obligation,  to  take  part  in  the  burden,  and  it  is  our  privilege  to  claim  for  our 
country  a  share  in  the  honor  and  in  the  fame.  This  acknowledgment  of 
duty,  this  attempt  to  realize  the  honor,  is  what  we  at  least  shall  endeavor  to 
obtain  from  the  government ;  and  with  nothing  less  than  this  shall  we  who 
are  assembled  here  be, under  any  circumstances, persuaded  to  say  ' content.'" 

The  conference  at  Constantinople  began  its  sittings  on  the  23d  of 
December.  Apian  of  reform  was  prepared  and  was  about  to  be  announced, 
when  on  the  30th  of  the  month  the  sultan  made  known  to  the  ambassadors 
of  the  powers  that  he  was  about  to  promulgate  a  new  constitution,  which 
would  include  reform  in  the  matters  complained  of  So  there  was  a  suspen- 
sion of  proceedings  for  three  weeks.  When  the  conference  finally  closed, 
the  proposals  which  it  had  prepared  for  an  international  commission,  and 
also  for  the  appointment  of  governors  general  for  the  provinces  by  the 
sultan  for  a  term  of  five  years,  under  the  approval  of  the  powers,  were  both 
rejected  by  the  porte,  and  matters  were  left  in  virtually  the  same  condition 
as  they  had  been  before — except  the  announcement  of  the  new  constitution 
of  the  Turkish  empire. 

Such  was  the  condition  of  affairs  when,  on  the  8th  of  February,  1877, 
Parliament  convened.  Mr.  Gladstone  was  in  attendance  and  spoke  on  the 
address  from  the  throne.  A  few  days  afterward  he  again  addressed  the 
House  more  at  length  on  the  Eastern  Question  and  the  duties  of  England 
with  respect  thereto.  Those  duties  did  not  involve  a  war  with  Turkey,  but 
did  involve  the  maintenance  of  good  faith  and  the  principle  of  protection  to 
the  Christian  populations  of  Bulgaria,  Herzegovina,  Servia,  and  the  rest. 
The  speaker  showed  himself  to  be  deeply  in  earnest,  and  his  address  was 
In  the  nature  of  a  challenge  to  the  ministerial  policy. 

Mr.  Chaplin  spoke  in  reply,  accusing  Mr.  Gladstone  and  his  followers 
of  having  attempted  with  their  speeches  and  pamphlets  to  force  a  policy 
upon  Great  Britain  in  opposition  to  the  policy  of  the  executive  government. 
Warming  up  to  the  occasion,  Mr.  Chaplin  said  that  the  right  honorable  gen- 
tleman (meaning  Mr.  Gladstone)  must  do  one  of  two  things  :  either  he 
must  make  good  the  statements  which  he  had  published  and  uttered,  or  else 
withdraw  them,  ^^.s^  there  was  no  other  course  for  an  honorable  man  to  pursue  ! 
This  seemed  to  Imply  that  If  Mr.  Gladstone  did  not  prove  or  disavow  his 
publication  he  was  not  an  honorable  man.  Hereupon  the  speaker  called 
Mr.  Chaplin  to  order  for  unparliamentary  language,  and  he  was  obliged,  not 
indeed  to  prove,  but  to  disavow  ! 

The  House  was  astonished  at  what  followed.  Mr.  Gladstone  had,  of 
course,  no  notice  of  the  challenge  which  was  to  be  given  him  on  the  occasion. 
The  challenge  involved  a  wide   range   of  discussion  ;  but   he   Immediately 


542  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

arose  and  replied  to  Mr.  Chaplin  in  a  memorable  manner.  He  said  that  the 
honorable  gentleman  had  not  attended  the  public  meetings  of  which  he  com- 
plained. He  should  have  done  so,  and  there  challenged  him  (Mr.  Glad- 
stone) for  his  proofs.  In  the  beginning  of  the  speech  there  were  signs  of 
interruption,  but  this  aroused  the  statesman  to  the  proper  excitement  for  a 
great  address.  He  put  down  first  one  interlocutor,  and  then  another,  but 
did  not  lose  sight  of  the  original  offender. 

Referring  to  Mr.  Chaplin,  Mr.  Gladstone  continued  :  "  He  says,  sir,  that 
I  have  been  an  inflammatory  agitator,  and  that,  as  soon  as  I  have  got  into 
this  House,  I  have  no  disposition  to  chant  in  the  same  key.  But  before 
these  debates  are  over — before  this  question  is  settled — the  honorable  gen- 
tleman will  know  more  about  my  opinions  than  he  knows  at  .present,  or  is 
likely  to  know  to-night.  I  am  not  about  to  reveal  now  to  the  honorable 
gentleman  the  secrets  of  a  mind  so  inferior  to  his  own.  I  am  not  so  young 
as  to  think  that  his  obliging  inquiries  supply  me  with  the  opportunities  most 
advantageous  to  the  public  interest  for  the  laying  out  of  the  plan  of  a  cam- 
paign. By  the  time  the  honorable  gentleman  is  as  old  as  I  am,  if  he  comes 
in  his  turn  to  be  accused  of  cowardice  by  a  man  of  the  next  generation  to 
himself,  he  probably  may  find  it  convenient  to  refer  to  the  reply  I  am  now 
making,  and  to  make  it  a  model,  or,  at  all  events,  to  take  from  it  hints  and 
suggestions,  with  which  to  dispose  of  the  antagonist  that  may  then  rise 
against  him."  This  certainly  was  sufficient  to  dispose  of  the  rash  gentleman 
who  had  aroused  the  old  parliamentarian  of  whom  he  might  well  beware. 

Mr.  Gladstone  in  the  next  place  replied  to  the  assertion  that  he  had  himself 
by  his  pamphlet  on  the  "Bulgarian  Horrors"  and  by  his  Blackheath  speech 
become  the  fomentor  of  the  mischief  that  was  abroad  in  Europe.  If  this 
were  so,  why  did  not  some  member  of  the  government  reply  with  a  pamphlet 
to  the  contrary,  and  with  a  speech  denying  and  confuting  his  own  ?  That 
would  have  been  the  proper  method  of  extinguishing  a  false  agitation.  The 
speaker  went  on  to  show  that  other  patriotic  Englishmen,  such  as  Lord 
Derby,  had  done  their  part  to  arouse  the  just  resentment  of  England  on  the 
score  of  the  Turkish  outrages.  Then  Mr.  Gladstone,  still  unwilling  to  let 
Mr.  Chaplin  pass  from  view,  continued  :  "I  will  tell  the  honorable  gentleman 
something  in  answer  to  his  questions,  and  it  is  that  I  will  tell  him  nothing 
at  all.  I  will  take  my  own  counsel,  and  beg  to  inform  him  that  he  shall 
have  no  reason  whatever  to  complain,  when  the  accounts  come  to  be  settled 
and  cast  up  at  the  end  of  the  whole  matter,  of  any  reticence  or  suppressions 
on  my  part." 

As  for  the  polic)-  of  the  government,  the  speaker  said  it  had  become 
necessary  to  watch  that  policy  lest  it  should  conflict  with  the  sentiment  and 
purpose  of  England.  As  to  Lord  Salisbury,  he  had  confidence  in  that  states- 
man to  uphold  the  honor  of  his  country  ;  but  he  had  fears  that  there  might 


OUT    OF    OFFICE.  543 

be  two  policies  in  the  government  councils.  As  for  Parliament,  there  was 
before  that  body  a  great  and  solemn  question  to  be  determined.  It  was  the 
question  of  the  East.  This  question  had  returned,  and  must  be  met  with  all 
its  absorbing  interests.  In  the  original  entrance  of  the  Turks  into  Europe, 
it  might  be  said  there  was  a  turning  point  in  human  history.  "  To  a  great 
extent,"  said  he,  "  it  continues  to  be  the  cardinal  question,  the  question 
which  casts  into  the  shade  every  other  question,  and  the  question  which  is 
now  brought  before  the  mind  of  the  country  far  more  fully  than  at  any 
period  of  our  history,  far  more  fully  than  even  at  the  time  of  the  Crimean 
War,  when  we  were  pouring  forth  our  blood  and  treasure  in  what  we 
thought  to  be  the  cause  of  justice  and  right.  And  I  endeavored  to  impress 
upon  the  minds,  of  my  audience  at  Taunton,  not  a  blind  prejudice  against 
this  man  or  that,  but  a  great  watchfulness,  and  the  duty  of  great  activity. 

"  It  is  the  duty  of  every  man  to  feel  that  he  is  bound  for  himself,  accord- 
ing to  his  opportunities,  to  examine  what  belongs  to  this  question,  with 
regard  to  which  it  can  never  be  forgotten  that  we  are  those  who  set  up  the 
power  of  Turkey  in  1854;  that  we  are  those  who  gave  her  the  strength 
which  has  been  exhibited  in  the  Bulgarian  massacres  ;  that  we  are  those 
who  made  the  treaty  arrangements  that  have  secured  her  for  twenty  years 
from  almost  a  single  hour  of  uneasiness  brought  about  by  foreign  interven- 
tion ;  and  that,  therefore,  nothing  can  be  greater  and  nothing  deeper  than 
our  responsibility  in  the  matter.  It  is  incumbent  upon  us,  one  and  all,  that 
we  do  not  allow  any  consideration,  either  of  party  or  personal  convenience, 
to  prevent  us  from  endeavoring  to  the  best  of  our  ability  to  discharge  this 
great  duty,  that  now,  at  length,  in  the  East,  has  sprung  up;  and  that  in  the 
midst  of  this  great  opportunity,  when  all  Europe  has  been  called  to  collect- 
ive action,  and  when  something  like  European  concert  has  been  established 
— when  we  learn  the  deep  human  interests  that  are  involved  in  every  stage 
of  the  question — as  far  as  England  at  least  is  concerned,  every  Englishman 
should  strive  to  the  utmost  of  his  might  that  justice  shall  be  done." 

The  Eastern  Question  soon  drago^ed  itself  into  the  Turco-Russian  War. 
The  powers  trifled  with  the  question  until  Russia,  within  the  limits  of  her 
opportunity,  went  to  the  task  of  punishing  the  Turks  by  herself  On  the 
24th  of  April,  1 877,  war  was  declared  ;  the  conference  of  Constantinople  was 
acknowledged  as  a  failure ;  the  protocol  which  had  been  prepared  at  Lon- 
don became  of  no  effect,  and  proclamations  of  neutrality  were  issued  by 
England,  France,  and  Italy. 

On  the  7th  of  May  the  question  of  the  conduct  of  the  government  with 
regard  to  these  great  matters  came  up  in  the  House  of  Commons,  and  Mr. 
Gladstone,  reappearing  in  that  body,  offered  the  following  resolutions  :  "  First, 
That  this  House  finds  just  cause  of  dissatisfaction  and  complaint  in  the  con- 
duct of  the  Ottoman  porte  with  regard  to  the  dispatch  written  by  the  Earl 


544  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OK    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

of  Derby  on  September  21,  1876,  and  relating  to  the  massacres  in  Bulgaria. 
Second,  That  until  such  conduct  shall  have  been  essentially  changed,  and  guar- 
antees on  behalf  of  the  subject  populations  other  than  the  promises  or  osten- 
sible measures  of  the  porte  shall  have  been  provided,  that  government  will 
be  deemed  by  this  House  to  have  lost  all  claim  to  receive  either  the  mate- 
rial or  the  moral  support  of  the  British  crown.  Third,  That  in  the  midst 
of  the  complications  which  exist,  and  the  war  which  has  actually  begun, 
this  House  earnestly  desires  the  influence  on  the  British  crown  in  the  coun- 
cils of  Europe  to  be  employed  with  a  view  to  the  early  and  effectual  devel- 
opment of  local  liberty  and  practical  self-government  in  the  disturbed  prov- 
inces of  Turkey,  by  putting  an  end  to  the  oppression  which  they  now  suffer, 
with  the  imposition  upon  them  of  any  other  foreign  dominion.  Fourth,  That, 
bearing  in  mind  the  wise  and  honorable  policy  of  this  country  in  the  proto- 
col of  April,  1826,  and  the  treaty  of  July,  1827,  with  respect  to  Greece,  this 
House  furthermore  earnestly  desires  that  the  influence  of  the  British  crown 
to  the  promoting  [of]  the  concert  of  the  European  powers  in  exacting  from 
the  Ottoman  porte,  by  their  united  authority,  such  changes  in  the  govern- 
ment of  Turkey  as  they  may  deem  to  be  necessary  for  the  purposes  of 
humanity  and  justice,  for  effectual  defense  against  intrigue,  and  for  the 
peace  of  the  world  should  be  upheld.  Fifth,  That  a  humble  address,  setting 
forth  the  prayer  of  this  House,  according  to  the  tenor  of  the  foregoing  reso- 
lutions, be  prepared  and  presented  to  her  majesty." 

In  this  case  it  appeared  that  Mr.  Gladstone  had  overdrawn  the  mark. 
It  was  feared  by  many  that  the  resolutions  if  adopted  would  lead  to  an 
offensive-defensive  alliance  with  Russia.  A  considerable  part  of  the  Liberal 
contingent  held  this  view,  and  would  not  follow  the  leader.  The  third  reso- 
lution was  modified  into  a  simpler  form,  and  the  other  three  were  expedi- 
ently abandoned  by  Mr.  Gladstone.  But  the  statesman  rallied  all  his  force 
for  the  defense  of  his  third  resolution.  To  this  he  spoke  with  great  cogency. 
He  criticised  the  government,  which  he  accused  of  following  only  an  ambig- 
uous policy.  It  was  not  enough  that  England  should  give  a  moral  support 
to  the  cause  of  right  in  the  East.  The  remonstrances  of  the  government 
had  not  prevailed  with  the  porte.  It  was  not  possible  to  fix  the  guilt  of 
what  had  occurred  in  the  Turkish  provinces  on  any  party  or  parties  except 
on  the  Turkish  government  itself  The  Christian  subjects  of  the  Ottoman 
empire  had  had  ground  to  expect  defense  and  protection  from  Great  Britain 
as  well  as  from  Russia.  When  the  Liberal  party  was  in  power  it  had  acted 
vigorously  and  consistently  in  suppressing  the  outrages  in  Syria.  Ever 
since  the  Crimean  War  the  Christians  under  the  Mohammedan  sway  had 
not  been  properly  safeguarded.  The  great  battle  for  freedom  throughout 
the  world  had  not  been  fought  to  a  successful  conclusion.  Great  Britain 
ought  to  ask  herself  whether  she  had  well  performed  her  duty.     There  had 


OUT    OF    OFFICE.  545 

been  times  in  the  past  when  England  was  the  hope  of  freedom.  There  had 
been  times  when  every  high  aspiration  of  mankind  had  been  answered  with 
another  in  England,  when  every  blow  struck  for  emancipation  was  rein- 
forced with  another  blow  struck  by  a  Briton. 

People  who  enjoyed  freedom  under  British  institutions  ought  to  desire 
the  diffusion  of  freedom  to  others.  "You  talk  to  me,"  said  he,  "  of  the  estab- 
lished tradition  and  policy  in  regard  to  Turkey.  I  appeal  to  an  established 
tradition  older,  wider,  nobler  far — a  tradition,  not  which  disregards  British 
interests,  but  which  teaches  you  to  seek  the  promotion  of  these  interests  in 
obeying  the  dictates  of  honor  and  justice.  .  .  .  There  is  -now  before  the 
world  a  glorious  prize.  A  portion  of  those  unhappy  people  [meaning  the 
Christians  of  the  Turkish  provinces]  are  still  as  yet  making  an  effort  to 
retrieve  what  they  have  lost  so  long,  but  have  not  ceased  to  love  and  desire. 
I  speak  of  those  in  Bosnia  and  Herzegovina.  Another  portion — a  band  of 
heroes  such  as  the  world  has  rarely  seen — stand  on  the  rocks  of  Montenegro, 
and  are  ready  now,  as  they  have  ever  been  during  the  four  hundred  years  of 
their  exile  from  their  fertile  plains,  to  sweep  down  from  their  fastnesses  and 
meet  the  Turks  at  any  odds  for  the  reestablishment  of  justice  and  peace  in 
those  countries.  Another  portion  still,  the  five  million  Bulgarians,  cowed 
and  beaten  down  to  the  ground,  hardly  venturing  to  look  upward,  even  to 
their  Father  in  heaven,  have  extended  their  hands  to  you. 

"  But,  sir,  the  removal  of  that  load  of  woe  and  shame  is  a  great  and 
noble  prize.  It  is  a  prize  well  worth  competing  for.  It  is  not  yet  too  late 
to  try  to  win  it.  I  believe  there  are  men  in  the  cabinet  who  would  try  to 
win  it  if  they  were  free  to  act  on  their  own  beliefs  and  aspiration.  It  is  not 
yet  too  late,  I  say,  to  become  competitors  for  that  prize,  but  be  assured 
that  whether  you  mean  to  claim  for  yourselves  even  a  single  leaf  in  that 
immortal  chapter  of  renown  which  will  be  the  reward  of  true  labor  in  that 
cause,  or  whether  you  turn  your  backs  upon  that  cause  and  upon  your  own 
duty,  I  believe  for  one  that  the  knell  of  Turkish  tyranny  in  these  provinces 
has  sounded  ;  so  far  as  human  eye  can  judge  it  is  about  to  be  destroyed. 
The  destruction  may  not  come  in  the  way  or  by  the  means  that  we  should 
choose  ;  but,  come  this  boon  from  what  hands  it  may,  it  will  be  a  noble  boon, 
and  as  a  noble  boon  will  gladly  be  accepted  by  Christendom  and  the  world." 

The  debate  was  thus  on  in  full  force.  The  party  of  the  government 
declared  that  the  idea  of  acting  in  concert  with  the  other  powers  to  obtain 
the  desired  ends  in  the  East  could  be  no  longer  entertained.  The  Liberals 
generally  held  the  opposite  view.  Mr.  Gladstone  was  insistent  that  com- 
bined Europe  ought  to  act  against  Turkey  and  enforce  a  satisfactory  reform. 
He  did  not  believe  that  under  such  compulsion  the  porte  would  go  to  war 
with  the  combined  powers.  It  was  the  duty  of  Europe  to  send  an  interna- 
tional fleet  of  sufficient  strength  to  neutralize  that  of  Turkey. 
35 


546  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM     E.    GLADSTOME. 

The  speaker  then  compared  the  efforts  of  civiHzation  against  the  Turk- 
ish power  to  the  work  of  Sisyphus  rolHng  the  stone  up  the  mountain  slope. 
"Time,"  said  the  speaker,  "is  short;  the  sands  of  the  hourglass  are  run- 
ning out.  The  longer  you  delay  the  less  in  all  likelihood  you  will  be  able 
to  save  from  the  wreck  of  the  integrity  and  independence  of  the  Turkish 
empire.  If  Russia  should  fail  her  failure  will  be  a  disaster  to  mankind,  and 
the  condition  of  the  suffering  races,  for  whom  we  are  supposed  to  have 
labored,  will  be  worse  than  it  was  before.  If  she  succeeds,  and  if  her  con- 
duct be  honorable,  nay,  even  if  it  be  but  tolerably  prudent,  the  performance 
of  the  work  she  has  in  hand  will,  notwithstanding  all  your  jealousies  and  all 
your  reproaches,  secure  for  her  an  undying  fame.  When  that  work  shall  be 
accomplished,  though  it  be  not  in  the  way  and  by  the  means!  would  have 
chosen,  as  an  Englishman  I  shall  hide  my  head,  but  as  a  man  I  shall  rejoice. 
Nevertheless  to  my  latest  day  I  will  exclaim,  Would  God  that  in  this  crisis 
the  voice  of  the  nation  had  been  suffered  to  prevail  ;  would  God  that  in  this 
great,  this  holy  deed,  England  had  not  been  refused  her  share  !" 

Mr.  Gladstone  was  correct  at  this  juncture  in  believing  that  the  British 
nation  was  with  him  ;  but  the  Conservative  majority  in  the  House  pre- 
vailed, and  his  resolution  was  rejected.  This  was  done  by  a  general  vote  on 
party  lines,  though  the  Home  Rulers  were  about  evenly  divided.  Though 
he  was  thus  thwarted  in  the  effort  to  obtain  a  declaration  from  the  House 
of  Commons,  Mr.  Gladstone  continued  to  aoritate  throuorh  the  remainder  of 
the  year  and  down  to  the  close  of  the  Turco-Russian  War. 

Of  that  great  and  bloody  conflict  we  need  not  here  give  any  extended 
account.  We  have  already  indicated  the  relations  of  Mr.  Gladstone  to  the 
war  policy  in  the  East,  Suffice  it  to  say  that  the  general  plan  of  Russia  in 
the  great  campaign  of  1877  was  to  cross  the  Danube,  traverse  the  Balkans, 
beat  the  Turks  in  battle,  possibly  capture  Constantinople,  and  thus,  accord- 
ing to  the  declaration  of  Prince  Gortchakoff,  "  fulfill  the  duty  imposed  upon 
him  [the  czar]  by  the  interests  of  Russia,  whose  peaceable  development  was 
impeded  by  the  constant  troubles  in  the  East." 

A  large  Russian  army,  collected  in  the  South,  traversed  Roumania  and 
crossed  the  Lower  Danube  on  the  2 2d  of  June.  Another  division  crossed 
the  Middle  Danube  about  two  weeks  later.  The  czar  himself  took  the  field 
and  made  a  proclamation  to  the  Bulgarians.  The  Turkish  outposts  were 
broken  in.  The  Grand  Duke  Nicholas,  with  his  division,  reached  TIrnova. 
General  Gurko  pressed  on  toward  Shipka  Pass,  but  was  seriously  resisted. 
A  battle  was  fought  at  Tundja  Brook  on  the  i6th  of  July,  which  resulted  in 
the  first  victory  for  the  Russians.  The  Turks  then  concentrated  at  Shipka 
Pass.  Grand  Duke  Nicholas,  on  the  i6th  of  July,  captured  Nikopolis,  and 
then  marched  against  the  town  of  Plevna,  which  became  one  of  the  strategic 
points  of  the  war. 


OUT    OF    OFFICE. 


547 


Here,  however,  the  Russians  were  impeded  and  brought  to  a  hah. 
Osman  Pasha,  one  of  the  greatest  of  Turkish  generals,  planted  himself  in 
the  way,  with  an  army  of  fifty  thousand  men,  for  the  defense  of  Plevna. 
Suleiman  Pasha  checked  the  progress  of  General  Gurko,  and  Mehemet  AH 
gathered  an  army  of  sixty-five  thousand  men  at  Rasgrad.  For  the  time  the 
Russian  invasion  was  brought  to  a  dead  pause ;  but  the  invaders  gathered 
force,  and  Shipka  Pass  was  taken.  The  efforts  of  the  Turks  to  regain  it 
were  unsuccessful.  About  the  middle  of  August  bloody  battles  were  fought 
for  the  possession  of  the  pass.  From  the  6th  to  the  9th  of  September  the 
Russians  made  one  desperate  assault  after  another  on  Plevna,  in  the  course 
of  which  they  lost  in  a  principal  charge  no  fewer  than  eighteen  thousand 
men.  Then  followed  a  siege  of  five  months'  duration,  when  Osman  Pasha, 
reduced  by  starvation  rather  than  by  military  force,  was  obliged  to  capitu- 
late. By  the  surrender  the  country  was  opened  for  two  hundred  and  fifty 
miles  in  the  direction  of  Constantinople. 

Meanwhile  the  Grand  Duke  Michael,  eldest  brother  of  the  czar,  was 
conducting  a  great  campaign  in  Asia.  He  proceeded  first  to  the  capture  of 
the  fortress  of  Batoum,and  afterward  against  Ardahan,  Kars,  and  Erzeroum. 
At  Kars  there  was  a  memorable  siege,  which  lasted  until  the  17th  of  Novem- 
ber, when  the  place  was  carried  by  assault,  and  only  three  hundred  Turks 
were  found  alive  within  !  The  siege  of  Erzeroum  was  not  concluded  until 
the  31st  of  January,  1878,  and  was  then  terminated  by  an  armistice.  At 
last  the  Russians  in  the  European  field  issued  from  Shipka  Pass  and  fell 
upon  the  Turkish  army  at  Shenovo,  carried  the  place  by  storm,  captured  a 
division  of  twelve  thousand,  and  compelled  another  division  of  about  twice 
that  number  to  capitulate. 

Thus  in  a  war  of  about  seven  months'  duration  the  military  power  of 
the  Turks  was  completely  broken  down.  The  Russians  advanced  and  took 
possession  of  Adrianople.  The  last  shot  of  the  war  was  fired  on  the  20th 
of  Januar)-,  in  an  unimportant  engagement,  at  Tehorlu.  By  this  time  the 
alarmed  sultan  sent  his  commissioners  to  confer  w^ith  the  agents  of  the  czar, 
and  the  conditions  of  peace  w^ere  quickly  agreed  upon.  The  sultan  con- 
ceded the  followinof  terms:  That  Bulgaria  should  be  erected  into  an  inde- 
pendent  principality  ;  that  Montenegro,  Roumania,  and  Servia  should  also 
become  independent  ;  that  the  Turkish  government  in  Bosnia  and  Herze- 
govina should  be  thoroughly  reformed  ;  that  Viddin,  Rustchuk,  and  Silistria 
should  be  surrendered  to  the  Russians  ;  that  several  Turkish  fortresses 
should  be  evacuated  ;  and  that  a  war  indemnity  should  be  paid  to  Russia. 
It  was  on  the  3d  of  March,  1878,  at  the  town  of  San  Stefano,  that  a  treaty 
between  Russia  and  Turkey,  on  the  basis  here  indicated,  was  signed.  It 
appeared  that  the  Ottoman  empire  was  about  to  be  ground  into  powder 
under  the  victorious  wheels  of  the  autocratic  car. 


548 


LIFT-:    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 


"PEACE   WITH    HONOR. 
Return  of  Beaconsfield  from  the  Berlin  Conference. 


OUT    OF    OFFICE.  549 

When  matters  had  proceeded  thus  far,  however,  the  great  powers  of 
Europe  suddenly  put  forth  the  hand  and  arrested  the  proceedings.  They 
declared,  under  the  leadership  of  England,  that  the  questions  included  in 
settlement  by  the  treaty  of  San  Stefano  were  European  questions  and  could 
not  be  determined  except  by  the  concurrence  of  the  European  powers.  The 
settlement  imposed  by  the  czar  on  the  sultan  should  be  reviewed  by  a  con- 
gress of  the  powers  to  be  held  in  the  city  of  Berlin.  Accordingly,  on  the 
13th  of  July,  1878,  such  congress  was  convened — perhaps  the  most  mem- 
orable of  its  kind  in  the  after  third  of  the  nineteenth  century.  England  was 
represented  by  the  Earl  of  Beaconsfield ;  Austria,  by  Count  Andrassy  ;  the 
German  empire,  by  Prince  Bismarck  ;  Russia,  by  Prince  Gortchakof  and 
General  Shuvaloff  All  of  the  States  sent  their  ablest  men  to  the  confer- 
ence, which,  indeed,  included  at  its  sittings  the  finest  international  talent  of 
the  world. 

Among  the  ambassadors  the  Earl  of  Beaconsfield  was  conspicuous. 
That  statesman  was  here  in  his  glory.  Not  one  of  the  ambassadors  pos- 
sessed a  more  penetrating  and  comprehensive  genius.  With  this  were 
blended  also  a  kind  of  subtlety  and  an  element  of  wit  peculiarly  favor- 
able to  success  in  diplomacy.  The  earl  succeeded  in  leading  the  game. 
Twenty  sessions  of  the  Congress  were  held,  and  the  provisions  of  the  treaty 
of  San  Stefano  were  thoroughly  reviewed  and  greatly  miodified  before  they 
were  accepted.  Russia  was  obliged  to  yield  several  important  points,  but 
she  yielded  with  good  grace,  and  the  peace  which  was  concluded  was 
comparatively  acceptable  to  all,  with  the  exception  of  the  humiliated  Turk. 
The  Earl  of  Beaconsfield  returned  In  high  fame  to  England,  where  he 
was  received  with  great  applause  as  the  champion  of  the  British  empire 
who  had  brought  home  "  peace  with  honor." 

Meanwhile,  however,  affairs  in  the  British  empire  went  forward  on 
their  own  lines  of  evolution.  Mr.  Gladstone  and  his  followinsf  mieht  well 
claim  the  honor  of  having  Instigated  the  government  to  greater  activity  in 
asserting  itself  in  European  matters.  No  doubt  the  prime  minister  did 
avail  himself  of  the  policy  of  his  adversaries,  who  were  all  the  time  endeav- 
oring to  force  upon  the  government  the  duty  of  recognizing  the  claims  of 
oppressed  peoples. 

In  the  meantime  the  sentiment  of  England,  near  the  close  of  the  Turco- 
Russian  War,  veered  around  to  one  of  distrust  of  Russia.  It  was  feared  that 
that  power  would  plunge  down  on  Constantinople  and  thus  make  It  neces- 
sary for  Great  Britain  to  take  up  the  cause  of  the  very  Turk  for  whom  the 
International  contention  had  prevailed.  A  war  party  sprang  up  In  Eng- 
land— a  party  wanting  to  go  to  war  on  general  principles — a  party  that  was 
positively  disappointed  when  it  was  known  that  Russia  had  kept  faith  with 
the  powers  by  refusing  to  march  on  Constantinople.    The  Earl  of  Beacons- 


550  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.   GLADSTONE. 

field  found  himself  in  a  sort  of  national  whirlpool.  He  could  not  identify 
himself  with  the  arrogant  leaders  of  the  war  party,  and  at  the  same  time 
he  must,  as  prime  minister  and  chief  representative  of  Great  Britain, 
"uphold"  as  he  himself  expressed  it,  "the  character  and  prestige  of  Eng- 
land." 

This  situation  produced  what  has  been  called  the  Jingo  party  in  Eng- 
land. The  Jingoes  were  that  class  who  were  determined  by  war  to  make 
Great  Britain  cock  of  the  walk.  No  difference  what  the  war  miorht  be  or 
with  whom,  provided  it  was  war.  The  adherents  of  this  class,  especially  the 
younger  and  louder  leaders,  went  about  singing  and  yelling  a  bit  of  precious 
doggerel,  to  this  effect : 

"We  don't  want  to  fight,  but,  by  Jingo,  if  we  do, 

We've  got  the  ships,  we've  got  the  men,  we've  got  the  money,  too." 

This  beautiful  effusion  was  heard  nightly  in  the  streets  of  London,  and 
many  took  up  the  chorus  from  which  they  got  their  name  of  Jingoes.  They 
chose  to  make  themselves  the  chief  enemies  of  Mr.  Gladstone,  who,  though 
he  strongly  urged  the  government  to  espouse  the  cause  of  the  oppressed 
in  the  Turkish  provinces,  held  always  to  the  doctrine  of  accomplishing 
the  reform  without  a  resort  to  war.  The  reader  understands  full  well  that 
peaceable  element  in  his  character  which  led  him  ever  to  regard  war  as  the 
prime  horror  of  human  history — something  to  be  resorted  to  only  in  times 
when  no  other  remedy  could  avail.  At  the  period  of  which  we  speak  Mr. 
and  Mrs.  Gladstone  were  on  a  certain  occasion  grossly  insulted  in  a  West 
End  street  by  a  band  of  half-drunken  Jingoes,  who  were  making  night 
hideous.  The  statesman  and  his  wife  were  oblicred  to  find  shelter  in  the 
hallway  of  a  house  until  the  hooting  hoodlums  disappeared. 

At  least  two  honors  should  be  noted  as  havingf  been  awarded  to  Mr. 
Gladstone  in  this  year.  One  of  these  was  especially  significant.  The  time 
of  Lord  Beaconsfield  as  lord  rector  of  the  University  of  Glasgow  expired 
in  November,  1878,  and  Sir  Stafford  Northcote  was  nominated  as  the  Con- 
servative candidate  for  the  position.  The  Liberals  chose  Mr.  Gladstone  as 
their  candidate,  and  he  was  elected  over  Sir  Stafford  by  a  majority  of  nearly 
two  to  one.  Two  months  afterward  the  formation  of  a  Liberal  Palmerston 
club  at  Oxford  was  celebrated  by  the  undergraduates,  and  Mr.  Gladstone 
was  invited  to  speak.  In  the  course  of  his  remarks  he  took'  up  the  Eastern 
Question  (for  the  treaty  of  San  Stefano  had  not  yet  been  concluded),  and 
criticised  the  policy  of  the  government  for  sending  the  British  fleet  into 
the  Dardanelles.  This  act,  he  thought,  was  a  violation  of  international  law. 
The  statesman  defended  himself  against  the  charge  generally  circulated  by 
the  Conservatives  that  he  had  become  in  his  old  asfe  a  reckless  aeitator. 
He  admitted  that  for  the  last  eighteen  months  he  had  been   an  agitator. 


OUT    OF    OFFICE.  55  I 

He  had  agitated  for  what  he  considered  to  be  the  cause  and  interest  of  his 
country.  He  avowed  that  his  course  had  been  inspired  with  the  hope 
of  prevailing  against  what  he  considered  the  evil  policy  of  Lord  Beacons- 
field.  A  vote  of  credit  just  then  pending  in  Parliament  he  thought  the  most 
indefensible  measure  ever  presented. 

The  remarks  of  Mr.  Gladstone — as,  indeed,  everything  that  he  now 
said  in  a  public  way — were  widely  circulated,  and  this  case  provoked  the 
Earl  of  Beaconsfield  to  one  of  his  severest  retorts.  In  a  speech  which  he 
delivered  at  a  banquet  at  Knightsbridge  he  used  the  strongest  terms  of  rid- 
icule and  denunciation,  describing  Mr.  Gladstone  as  "a  statistical  rhetorician, 
inebriated  with  the  exuberance  of  his  own  verbosity,  and  gifted  with  an 
egotistical  imasfination  that  can  at  all  times  command  an  interminable  and 
inconsistent  series  of  arguments  to  malign  his  opponents  and  to  glorify  him- 
self." Indeed,  we  may  note  the  present  crisis  as  the  most  unpleasant  that 
ever  existed  between  the  two  statesmen. 

Mr.  Gladstone  was  now  within  a  few  months  of  completing  his  seven- 
tieth year,  and  the  Earl  of  Beaconsfield  was  already  seventy-four.  It  hardly 
became  them  to  quarrel,  and  we  may  admit  that  their  intercourse  hardly 
stooped  to  quarreling.  But  Mr.  Gladstone  felt  called  upon  to  write  to  his 
rival  a  request  that  he  furnish  references  to  such  "personalities"  as  he  (Mr. 
Gladstone)  was  accused  by  the  noble  lord  of  having  used  toward  him.  To 
this  the  Earl  of  Beaconsfield  replied  in  a  general  way  that  he  could  not  be 
expected  to  search  out  the  epithets  of  Mr.  Gladstone's  speeches  delivered  in 
the  last  two  and  a  half  years  and  to  specify  the  particular  things  complained 
of  He  said,  however,  that  he  would  withdraw  the  term  "devilish"  which 
he  had  ascribed  to  Mr.  Gladstone  as  one  of  his  expressions  regarding  him- 
self    We  pass  from  the  controversy  as  unpleasant  and  unbecoming. 

If  the  international  complication  in  Eastern  Europe  had  been  satisfac- 
torily adjusted,  not  all  of  the  foreign  troubles  of  Great  Britain  were  yet 
ended.  Others  of  a  serious  character  remained  behind.  The  possessions 
of  Great  Britain  in  the  East  were  a  source  of  constant  apprehension.  It 
was  said  that  the  Congress  of  Berlin  had  shut  the  front  orate  to  India,  but 
that  the  backdoor  had  been  left  open.  This  signified  that  India  was  still 
menaced  by  Russia  from  the  direction  of  Afghanistan.  If  Russia  seemed 
to  be  impeded  in  her  pressure  southwestward  she  was  not  so  impeded  in 
her  southeastward  course. 

Afghanistan  might  well  appear  to  Russia  as  a  passage  into  India.  She 
gravitated  in  the  direction  of  the  Punjab.  Time  and  again  Great  Britain 
had  suffered  alarm  lest  the  Afghans  should  be  pressed,  as  if  by  the  Russian 
pestle,  through  the  passes  of  the  Hindu-Kush.  One  difficulty  had  already 
occurred  of  late,  during  the  reign  of  Dost  Mohammed,  Prince  of  Cabul.  In 
that  country  the  government  had  been  transmitted  to   Shere  Ali,  a  son  of 


552  LIFE    A-\D    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

Dost  Mohammed,  and  at  his  court  a  British  embassy  was  maintained  to 
keep  the  home  government  informed  of  what  was  done  in  that  direction  by 
Russia.  The  latter  power  would  also  put  its  embassy  in  Cabul  to  report 
to  the  czar  what  was  done ;  but  when  the  Russian  embassy  came  to  the 
frontier  it  was  warned  away  by  the  authorities  ;  and  this  was  regarded  as  an 
insult. 

Hereupon  British  soldiers  w^ere  sent  into  Cabul  to  occupy  Kandahar. 
At  this  juncture  Shere  Ali  died  and  was  succeeded  by  his  son  Yakoob 
Khan,  who  immediately  made  terms  with  Great  Britain  In  a  treaty  w^hich 
was  signed  on  the  5th  of  May,  1879.  New  boundary  lines  should  be  granted 
to  British  India,  and  the  Khan  should  receive  a  compensation  of  sixty 
thousand  pounds.  Moreover,  Cabul  should  be  regarded  henceforth  as  under 
a  British  protectorate.  Thus  was  the  "  backdoor  "  also  shut  and  barred  against 
the  pressure  of  the  Russian  autocrat ;  Great  Britain  Is  capable  of  such 
thino-s  ! 

The  troubles  In  Afghanistan  were  a  source  of  constant  agitation  in 
Great  Britain.  Mr.  Gladstone  spoke  upon  the  complication  on  several 
occasions.  He  discussed  the  question  of  the  right  of  the  government  to 
force  upon  the  Ameer  a  foreign  embassy.  He  threw  the  responsibility  for 
the  difficulties  at  issue  and  for  the  Afghan  war  wholly  upon  the  cabinet. 
He  said  that  the  Executive  Department  had  gone  on  with  this  great  busi- 
ness without  consultinof  Parliament.  In  an  address  which  he  delivered  on 
the  30th  of  November,  1878,  he  spoke  at  length  to  his  constituency  of 
Greenwich.  It  was  the  occasion  of  his  relinquishing  his  claim  to  their  sup- 
port and  before  his  appeal  to  Midlothian. 

Toward  the  end  of  his  address  Mr.  Gladstone  said  that  the  recent 
policy  of  the  government  had  been  a  total  departure  from  that  pursued  by 
the  fathers.  He  said  that  the  question  at  Issue  could  not  be  settled  by 
Conservative  Injunctions  to  be  dumb.  Neither  could  it  be  settled  by  the 
issuance  of  garbled  reports  to  the  public.  It  could  not  be  settled  by  a 
chorus  of  newspaper  articles,  and  not  even  by  parliamentary  majorities.  The 
responsibility  for  the  state  of  affairs  in  the  far  East  rested  upon  the  ten  or 
twelve  men  who  constituted  the  British  cabinet.  By  and  by  the  people  of 
England  would  have  somewhat  to  say  about  their  share  In  the  responsibility. 
In  that  event  it  would  be  seen  that  the  share  of  the  people  would  be  the 
largest  of  all. 

"The  people,"  continued  the  speaker,  "  are  the  tribunal  of  final  appeal. 
Upon  them,  upon  every  constituency,  upon  every  man  in  every  constitu- 
ency, who  gives  his  sanction  to  an  unjust  war,  the  guilt  and  the  shame  will 
lie.  No;  there  is  something  a  great  deal  higher  than  all  those  external 
manifestations  by  which  we  are  apt  to  be  swayed  and  carried  away  ;  some- 
thing that  is  higher,  something  that  is  more  inward,  something  that  is  more 


OUT    OF    OFFICE.  553 

enduring.  External  success  cannot  always  silence  the  monitor  that  lies 
within.  You  all  know  the  noble  tragedy  of  our  great  Shakespeare,  in  which 
Lady  Macbeth,  after  having  achieved  the  utmost  external  success,  after 
having  waded  through  blood  to  a  crown,  and  that  crown  at  the  moment 
seemingly  undisputed,  yet  is  so  troubled  with  the  silent  action  of  conscience 
residing  within  the  breast  that  reason  itself  is  shaken  in  its  seat,  and  she 
appears  at  night  wandering  through  the  chambers  of  her  castle.  What  does 
she  say }  There  she  has  nothing  to  warn  her  from  without,  nothing  to 
alarm  her.  Her  success  had  been  complete.  She  had  reached  the  top  of 
what  some  think  to  be  human  felicity,  and  w4iat  all  admit  to  be  human 
authority.  What  does  she  say  in  that  condition  ?  '  Here's  the  smell  of  the 
blood  still ;  all  the  perfumes  of  Arabia  will  not  sweeten  this  little  hand.' 
And  the  physician  appointed  to  wait  on  her,  in  the  few  simple,  pregnant 
words  of  the  poet,  says,  '  This  disease  is  beyond  my  practice.' 

"  Yes,  gentlemen,  the  disease  of  an  evil  conscience  is  be)ond  the  prac- 
tice of  all  the  physicians  of  all  the  countries  in  the  world.  The  penalty 
may  linger ;  but,  if  it  lingers,  it  only  lingers  to  drive  you  on  further  into 
guilt  and  to  make  retribution,  when  it  comes,  more  severe  and  more  disas- 
trous. It  is  written  in  the  eternal  laws  of  the  universe  of  God  that  sin 
shall  be  followed  by  suffering.  An  unjust  war  is  a  tremendous  sin.  The 
question  which  you  have  to  consider  is  whether  this  war  is  just  or  unjust. 
So  far  as  I  am  able  to  collect  the  evidence  it  is  unjust.  It  fills  me  with  the 
greatest  alarm  lest  it  should  be  proved  to  be  grossly  and  totally  unjust.  If 
so,  we  should  come  under  the  stroke  of  the  everlasting  law  that  suffering 
shall  follow  sin  ;  and  the  day  will  arrive — come  it  soon  or  come  it  late — 
when  the  people  of  England  will  discover  that  national  injustice  is  the  surest 
road  to  national  downfall." 

When  Parliament  again  convened  Mr.  Gladstone  was  in  his  place  when 
a  motion  was  made  by  Mr.  Whitbread,  "That  this  House  disapproves  the 
conduct  of  her  majesty's  government,  which  has  resulted  in  the  war  with 
Afghanistan."  The  speaker  traversed  the  whole  question  of  the  relations 
of  Great  Britain  with  the  Ameer,  and  showed  that  the  conduct  of  the  govern- 
ment was  indefensible.  The  government  in  that  matter  had  first  hectored 
Russia  and  had  then  acquiesced  in  a  new  and  groundless  claim  of  that  coun- 
try to  send  a  mission  to  Cabul.  He  charged  home  upon  the  Conservatives 
their  responsibility  for  the  war.  "  You  have  made  this  war,"  said  he,  "  in 
concealment  from  Parliament,  in  reversal  of  the  policy  of  every  Indian  and 
home  government  that  has  existed  for  the  last  twenty-five  years,  in  con- 
tempt of  the  supplication  of  the  Ameer,  and  in  defiance  of  the  advice  of 
your  own  agent,  and  all  for  the  sake  of  obtaining  a  scientific  frontier.  We 
made  war  in  error  upon  Afghanistan  in  1838,  To  err  is  human  and  par- 
donable.    But  we   have   erred   a  second  time  upon  the  same  ground  and 


554 


LIFE    AND    TIMKS    OK    WILLIAM     K.    GLADSTONE. 


with  no  better  justification.  This  error  has  been  repeated  in  the  face  of 
every  warning  conceivable  and  imaginable,  and  in  the  face  of  an  unequaled 
mass  of  authorities.  May  Heaven  avert  a  repetition  of  the  calamity  which 
befell  our  army  in  1841  !" 

Then,  adverting  to  the  Whitbread  resolution  which  was  pending,  and  to 


VICTORIA,    EMPRESS   OF    INDIA. 


the  vote  about  to  be  taken,  Mr.  Gladstone  continued  :  "  I  should  have  hope 
of  this  division  if  I  really  believed  that  many  honorable  members  had  made 
themselves  individually  masters  of  the  case  which  is  disclosed  in  the  recesses 
of  these  two  volumes  of  parliamentary  papers.  .  .  .  The  responsibility,  which 
is  now  yours  alone,  will  be  shared  with  you  by  the  majority  of  this  House  ; 
but  many  who  will  decline  to  share  in  it  will  hope  for  the  ultimate  disap- 
proval and  reversal  of  your  course  by  the  nation."  Mr.  Gladstone's  appeal^ 
however,  was  futile,  and  the  pending  resolution  was  rejected. 

Not  only  in  the  far  East,  but  also  in  the  Dark  Continent,  did  England 


OUT    OF    OFFICE.  555 

have  her  troubles.  We  shall  not  here  recount  the  military  operations  of  the 
British  in  South  Africa  at  this  period  ;  for  they  do  not  directly  concern  the 
life  and  work  of  Mr.  Gladstone.  There  was  the  war  in  Transvaal,  with  the 
consequent  determination  on  the  part  of  Great  Britain  to  annex  that  country. 
There  was  also  the  expedition  into  Zululand,  which  became  a  British  poses- 
sion  in  1887.  In  general  the  course  of  the  empire  at  this  epoch  was  to 
enlarge  and  confirm  itself  in  every  part  of  the  world.  Nor  may  we  omit  to 
mention  again  the  influence  of  the  Earl  of  Beaconsfield,  who  deemed  it  his 
greatest  honor  to  have  glorified  somewhat,  with  the  addition  of  new  gems, 
the  already  resplendent  crown  of  his  imperial  mistress. 

We  here  arrive  at  the  great  political  transformation  which  began  with 
the  year  1879.  ^^^^  Liberals,  though  long  in  eclipse,  had  no  notion  of  being 
remanded  to  eternal  darkness,  to  wander  forever  rayless  and  pathless.  On 
the  contrary,  they  began  to  muster  in  great  force  and  with  great  spirit,  to 
regain  control  of  the  government.  The  septennial  parliamentary  system  of 
Great  Britain  is  especially  favorable  to  perpetual  reaction  and  rebounding 
from  one  ascendency  to  the  other.  In  a  period  of  seven  years,  or  even  five 
years,  a  dominant  party  will  always  lay  up  wrath  against  the  day  of  wrath. 
There  will  come  a  revelation  of  righteous  judgment.  The  party  out  of 
power  is  always  virtuous  and  patriotic  !  The  party  In  power  is  always  cor- 
rupt and  selfish  !  So  runs  the  jargon  of  political  utterance  in  all  countries 
having  free  Institutions  and  public  discussion  of  policies. 

Certainly  the  Conservative  party  in  England  had  now  had  Its  reign. 
That  reign  was  drawing  to  a  close.  There  was  considerable  time  yet  to  run 
before  Parliament  would  expire  of  its  own  limitation.  It  had  become  cus- 
tomary, however,  to  dissolve  at  the  end  of  the  sixth  session.  To  this  con- 
tingency the  Liberals  now  looked  forward.  Mr.  Gladstone,  whose  age 
seemed  not  at  all  to  weigh  upon  his  spirits,  though  he  had  the  common 
weakness  of  referring  to  his  years,  as  though  his  course  were  nearing  its 
end,  eagerly  challenged  the  ministry  to  justify  itself  by  an  appeal  to  the 
country.  Conditions  favored  him  in  making  such  a  challenge ;  for  com- 
merce had  ebbed,  and  there  was  much  industrial  distress. 

Besides,  in  Ireland  there  was  a  suppressed  volcano.  However,  the 
government  held  on,  as  though  it  would  live  out  Its  constitutional  period  ; 
but  It  was  a  time  of  surprises.  Late  In  the  year  a  dissolution  was  suddenly 
declared  for  the  24th  of  March,  1880.  The  elections  were  to  be  held  Imme- 
diately, and  the  political  excitement  rose  to  a  high  pitch.  Mr.  Gladstone 
for  his  part  availed  himself  of  a  popularity  which  had  spread  on  his 
behalf  in  Scotland.  His  recent  election  as  rector  of  the  University  of 
Glasgow  showed  plainly  the  esteem  in  which  he  was  held.  In  arranging 
his  own  campaign  he  chose  Midlothian  as  the  scene  of  battle. 

There  the  statesman  conducted  one  of  the  most  remarkable  campaigns 


556 


LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM     E.    GLADSTONE. 


of  recent  times.  It  was  on  the  29th  of  December,  1879,  that  he  began  the 
canvass  in  his  chosen  field.  He  had  now  passed  his  seventieth  year, but  he 
was  a  rucreed  man,  with  an  unbroken  constitution,  a  powerful  voice,  and 
capable  of  enduring  without  fatigue  great  toil  and  without  danger  serious 


WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE    IN    1 88o,    TI.ME   OF   THE    MIDLOTHIAN    CAMPAIGN. 


exposures.  The  Midlothian  campaign  was  really  wonderful,  for  the  addresses^^ 
delivered  by  Mr.  Gladstone  and  for  the  throngs  that  followed  in  his  wake. 
The  Conservative  candidate  was  the  son  of  the  Duke  of  Buccleugh,  whose 
title  was  Lord  Dalkeith,  native  and  to  the  manner  born.  But  Mr.  Glad- 
stone's popularity  bore  down  all  opposition,  and  he  triumphed  over  his 
competitor  by  a  majority  of  several  hundred  votes.     His  success  was  height- 


OUT    OF    OFFICE.  557 

enecl  by  the  fact  that  the  constituency  of  Leeds  had  also  offered  to  support 
Mr.  Gladstone  for  reelection,  and  stood  ready  to  catch  him  if  he  should  be 
thrown  in  Midlothian.  And  as  if  to  heighten  the  gratification,  Mr.  Herbert 
Gladstone,  youngest  son  of  the  statesman,  who  had  failed  of  election  in  Mid- 
dlesex, where  he  was  defeated  by  Lord  George  Hamilton,  was  substituted 
for  his  honored  father  by  the  constituency  of  Leeds. 

The  question  of  the  leadership  of  the  Liberal  party  was  now  on  in 
earnest ;  for  that  party  was  overwhelmingly  victorious  in  the  elections.  Three 
hundred  and  fifty-one  Liberals  were  chosen  against  two  hundred  and  forty 
Conservatives,  whereas  in  the  last  Parliament  there  had  been  three  hundred 
and  fifty-one  Conservatives  against  two  hundred  and  fifty-one  Liberals.  The 
eleven  votes  lost  to  the  Conservatives  under  the  number  recently  held  by 
their  adversaries  went  to  the  Home  Rulers,  whose  numbers  now  rose  from 
fifty  to  sixty-one. 

It  is  interesting  to  note  at  this  juncture  the  sentiment  of  Mr.  Gladstone 
in  the  political  contest.  In  one  of  his  addresses  at  Edinburgh,  speaking  of 
his  opponents,  he  said  :  "  I  give  them  credit  for  patriotic  motives ;  I  give 
them  credit  for  those  patriotic  motives  which  are  so  incessantly  and  gratui- 
tously denied  to  us.  I  believe  that  we  are  all  united,  gentlemen — indeed,  it 
would  be  most  unnatural,  if  we  were  not — in  a  fond  attachment,  perhaps  in 
something  of  a  proud  attachment,  to  the  great  country  to  which  we  belong 
— to  this  great  empire,  which  has  committed  to  it  a  trust  and  a  function 
given  from  Providence  as  special  and  remarkable  as  ever  was  Intrusted  to  any 
portion  of  the  family  of  man.  Gentlemen,  I  feel  when  I  speak  of  that  trust 
and  that  function  that  words  fail  me  ;  I  cannot  tell  you  what  I  think  of  the 
nobleness  of  the  inheritance  that  has  descended  upon  us,  of  the  sacredness 
of  the  duty  of  maintaining  it.  I  will  not  condescend  to  make  it  a  part  of 
controversial  politics.  It  is  a  part  of  my  being,  of  my  flesh  and  blood,  of 
my  heart  and  soul.  For  those  ends  I  have  labored  through  my  youth  and 
manhood  till  my  hairs  are  gray.  In  that  faith  and  practice  I  have  lived; 
and  in  that  faith  and  practice  I  will  die." 

Great  was  the  discomfiture  of  the  Conservatives  in  the  parliamentary 
election  of  the  spring  of  1880.  The  tables  were  completely  turned  upon 
them.  As  for  the  Earl  of  Beaconsfield,  that  statesman,  now  In  the  last  year 
of  his  life,  might  look  on  unmoved  from  his  rest  in  the  House  of  Lords. 
But  the  rank  and  file  of  Conservative  politicians  were  in  dismay.  The 
blow  they  had  received  reached  as  high  as  the  throne.  For  the  queen, 
although  not  permitted  under  the  British  Constitution  to  have  political 
sentiments,  was  at  heart  with  the  Conservatives,  and  her  majesty  no  doubt 
felt  the  woman's  mortification  and  the  queen's  grief  at  the  Liberal  triumph. 
It  was  necessary  that  she  should  send  for  a  Liberal  statesman  to  become 
prime  minister. 


558 


LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM     E.    GLADSTONE. 


As  to  calling  Mr.  Gladstone,  the  queen  would  fain  obviate  that  neces- 
sity, and  to  this  end  she  sent  for  the  Marquis  of  Hartington  ;  but  that  noble- 
man could  not  accept  the  responsibility.  Lord  Granville  was  called,  but  he 
also  declined  the  heavy  trust.  It  only  remained  for  her  majesty  to  summon 
aeain  William  E.  Gladstone  and  to  commission  him  first  minister  of  the 
When  the  true  leader  was  thus  discovered  the  cabinet  was  quickly 


crown 


•JllE    MIDLOTHIAN    CAMPAIGN. 


constituted  of  able  and  progressive  men,  and  behind  the  cabinet  was  the 
largest  party  majority  that  had  ever  been  known  in  recent  times. 

As  for  the  new  prime  minister  himself,  his  triumph  was  complete.  He 
might  well  survey  the  field  with  the  feelings  of  one  who,  having  safely  passed 
his  threescore  years  and  ten,  and  havinof  arrived  at  the  highest  honors  which 
his  country  can  possibly  bestow,  still  in  the  enjoyment  of  perfect  health,  has 
little  with  which  to  reproach  himself  and  much  for  which  to  be  grateful. 
Doubtless  his  feelings  and  sentiments  were  softened  in  the  event.  His 
rival  sat  for  only  a  few  days  in  the  House  of  Lords,  enjoying  his  well-won 
honors.  But  the  last  sands  of  his  life  \vere  falling  fast,  and  his  end  was  at 
hand.  On  the  21st  of  April,  1881,  Benjamin  Disraeli,  Earl  of  Beaconsfield, 
passed  away,  leaving  a  great  fame  to  the  keeping  of  his  country. 


FIRST    BATTLE    FOR    HUME    RULE. 


559 


CHAPTER  XXVI. 
First  Battle  for  Home  Rule. 

HE  second  ministerial  ascendency  of  William  E.  Gladstone  was 
characterized  by  a  great  battle  for  Home  Rule  in  Ireland. 
The  Liberal  triumph  of  1880  had  as  one  of  its  concomitants 
the  election  of  an  increased  Home  Rule  continent  to  the 
House  of  Commons.  A  Home  Rule  party  made  its  appear- 
ance as  a  positive  factor  in  political  history.  It  was  a  party  of  a  single  idea, 
and  that  idea  varied  in  intensity  according  to  the  temperament  of  the  Indi- 
vidual members  composing  the  party.  Nor  was  the  faction  any  longer  a 
mere  handful.  Sixty-one  members  of  this  faith  appeared  in  the  House  at 
the  opening  of  the  parliamentary  session  of  1881. 

In  a  general  way  the  Home  Rulers  were  in  sympathy  with  the  policies 
and  purposes  of  the  Liberal  party.  That  party  lay  next  to  themselves  In 
the  scale  of  political  development ;  the  Conservatives  were  further  off.  But 
Mr.  Gladstone  found  from  the  very  start  that  he  could  not  depend  upon  the 
support  of  the  Irish  contingent  except  in  so  far  as  that  support  was 
consistent  with  the  one  thing  which  the  party  desired  to  promote,  and  that 
was  a  system  of  Home  Rule  government  for  Ireland.  In  the  course  of 
events  the  Home  Rule  contingent  was  bent  around  until  it  seemed  to  attach 
itself  to  the  extreme  right,  or  Conservative  end  of  the  political  platform. 

It  was  at  this  juncture  that  the  Irish  Land  League,  organized  in  1879, 
with  Charles  Stewart  Parnell  as  Its  president,  became  a  social  and  political 
force  in  the  drama.  Mr.  Parnell  was  one  of  the  most  capable  and,  withal, 
straightforward  leaders  that  recent  history  has  revealed.  He  was  at  the 
time  of  which  we  speak  only  thirty-five  years  of  age.  He  had  been  In  Par- 
liament since  1875,  and  had  acquired  a  thorough  political  education.  In 
1879  ^^  visited  the  United  States,  and  in  the  following  year  succeeded  Mr. 
Shaw  as  the  leader  of  the  Home  Rule  party.  He  was  a  man  whose  courage 
was  equal  to  his  ability,  and  whose  ability  was  as  great  as  the  exigency  of 
his  country.  Such  a  leader,  with  more  than  threescore  capable  men  in  his 
following,  must  be  considered  by  any  ministry,  however  well  fortified  In  pub- 
lic opinion  and  supported  by  however  strong  a  majority. 

Of  the  Home  Rule  party  the  new  Liberal  government  took  at  first  no 
notice.  It  Is  always  the  plan  of  the  two  leading  parties  in  a  country  to 
ignore  the  third  as  long  as  possible.  Finally  the  remnants  of  the  two  com- 
bine against  the  one,  and  then  there  Is  a  sudden  change  of  scene.  At  the 
opening  of  Parliament  in  January  of  1881  it  was  soon  found  difficult  to 
deal  with  these  men  of  one  idea.  And  yet  they  must  be  dealt  with  ;  for  a 
state  of  affairs  had  now  supervened   In    Ireland  which   could  no  longer  be 


^6o 


LIFE    AXD    TIMES    OF    ^VILLIAM     E.    (JLADSTONE. 


overlooked  in  the  administration.  We  may  suppose  that  Mr.  Gladstone  did 
not  desire  to  overlook  it,  but  his  temper  was  always  to  j^roceed  with  caution 
and  by  tentative  stages. 

The  situation  in  Ireland  did  not  admit  of  this  method.  In  that  country 
suffering,  want,  distress,  resentment,  rebellion,  hatred,  and  every  specter  that 
arises  under  the  wand  of  oppression  had  come  to  the  huts  of  the  lowly.  It 
was  under  these  conditions  that  the  great  Land  League  of  1879  "^^'^-S  formed. 


FENIAN    DISORDERS    IN    IRELAND — ATTACK    ON    A    POLICE   VAN. 

That  socio-political  compact  had  for  its  object,  in  a  word,  the  alleviation  of 
the  hardships  of  the  Irish  tenants.  We  must  say  that  the  methods  to  be 
employed  did  not  much  regard  the  existing  laws.  Those  laws  had  been 
made  for  the  most  part  by  the  landlords  in  their  own  interest.  The  result 
was  at  last  the  outbreak  of  crime  and  outrage.  Such  was  the  situation  that 
the  new  Liberal  government  was  given  no  option  in  the  matter  of  taking  Im- 
mediate cognizance  of  the  condition  of  Ireland. 

Under  such  circumstances  it  is  always  the  method  to  try  force  first. 
The  existing  order  sounds  an  alarm  and  publishes  a  declaration  to  the 
effect  that,  whatever  may  have  been  the  antecedents,  the  first  thing  to  be 
done  Is  to  restore  order  to  society  and  to  punish  crime.     This  was  accord- 


FIRST    BATTLE    FOR    HOME    RULE.  56 1 

ingly  undertaken  by  the  government.  A  Coercion  Act  was  prepared  and 
introduced  into  the  House  of  Commons,  the  object  of  which  was  to  put 
down  with  a  strong  hand  the  disturbers  of  the  peace  in  Ireland.  Construct- 
ively the  disturbers  of  the  peace  were  the  Land  League  and  its  abettors. 
The  first  principle  of  the  Coercion  Bill  was  a  suspension  of  the  habeas 
corpus.  This  done,  the  officers  of  any  district  in  Ireland  might  proceed 
under  designation  of  the  lord  lieutenant  to  arrest  and  imprison  without 
judicial  processes  those  who  were  alleged  to  be  disturbers  of  the  peace. 

At  the  time  of  bringing  in  this  bill  a  new  Land  Bill  was  announced, 
which  also  was  in  the  nature  of  an  amendment  and  extension  of  the  Irish 
Land  Act  of  1870.  It  was  now  proposed  In  amendment  to  make  the  law  of 
tenant  right  in  Ulster  the  standard  for  the  whole  of  Ireland.  Certainly  the 
Liberal  majority  was  sufficient  to  enable  the  government  to  carry  through 
whatever  measure  it  might  propose.  For  the  moment  the  Home  Rulers 
saw  themselves,  in  the  matter  of  the  Coercion  Act,  about  to  be  over- 
whelmed, and  their  cause  destroyed,  as  they  believed,  by  the  hand  of  power. 
In  this  emergency  they  adopted  the  policy  of  obstruction.  They  might  at 
least  systematically  Impede  the  consideration  and  passage  of  the  odious  bill 
through  Parliament.  The  British  Constitution  relative  to  the  House  of 
Commons  gave  great  liberties  in  this  respect.  In  that  body  the  freedom 
of  debate  was  fully  conceded.  There  was  no  rule  for  closure  such  as  that 
practiced  in  the  French  Assembly,  or  for  the  previous  question,  as  employed 
in  our  House  of  Representatives.  There  was,  true  enough,  a  motion  for 
closing  the  debate ;  but  this  motion  might  In  its  turn  be  debated.  There- 
fore it  could  not  avail  against  a  systematic  policy  of  obstruction. 

It  was  on  the  6th  of  January,  1881,  that  the  Coercion  Bill  was  intro- 
duced. The  debate  was  to  have  been  soon  concluded  ;  but  it  could  not  be 
done.  The  Home  Rulers  continued  to  debate  It.  They  were  able  and  per- 
sistent. They  divided  themselves  into  contingents,  and  a  number  were 
always  prepared  to  continue  the  debate.  No  vigilance  could  surprise  them. 
Day  or  night,  it  was  always  the  same.  January  went  by,  and  February  ;  and 
the  end  seemed  as  far  off  as  ever.  At  length,  however,  toward  the  end  of 
February,  the  speaker  announced  that  on  the  2d  of  March  he  would  by 
sheer  prerogative  close  the  debate  and  call  the  vote.  This  proposal  was 
resisted  to  the  bitter  end.  When  the  2d  of  March  came  there  was  an  up- 
roarious opposition  to  the  speaker's  effort  to  close  the  discussion.  The 
House  was  for  a  time  a  scene  of  the  greatest  confusion,  and  the  cry  of 
"  Privilege  !"  "  Privilege  !"  was  heard  on  every  hand;  but  the  majority,  under 
the  lead  of  the  speaker,  had  its  way,  and  the  Home  Rulers  were  overrun. 
The  vote  was  taken,  and  the  Coercion  Bill  was  carried. 

This  was  only  the  beginning  of  war.     On  the  day  following  the  passage 
of  the  Coercion  Act  the  leaders  of  the  Irish  party  were  forcibly  expelled 
36 


562 


LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF     WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 


from  the  House  of  Commons.  Charles  Stewart  Parnell  and  William 
O'Brien  were  arrested  and  thrown  into  prison,  where  they  remained  until 
the  following  year.  It  was  believed,  for  the  time,  that  this  method  of  pur- 
gation and  suppression  would  end  the  Land  League  and  silence  its  leaders ; 
but  not  so.     No  sooner  had  the  hand  of  force  been  applied  than  a  strong 


WILLIAM    O  BRIEN. 


sympathy  was  created  for  the  oppressed  and  their  cause.  A  reaction  came  on 
in  their  favor.  The  triumph  of  the  government  was  seen  to  be  no  triumph, 
and  the  imprisoned  leaders  of  the  Land  League  got  as  much  sympathy  from 
the  public  as  the  ministry  itself.  The  composition  of  the  Liberal  party  was 
peculiar.  It  was  graded  all  the  way  up  from  conservatism  to  radicalism. 
The  radicals  of  the  party  were  in  so  close  sympathy  with  the  Home  Rulers 
that  party  discipline  was  necessary  in  order  to  restrain  their  insurgent  dis- 
position.    Aye,  more  than   this;   Mr.   Gladstone  himself  inclined   from   the 


FIRST    BATTLE    FOR    HOME    RULE.  563 

perpendicular  in  the  direction  of  Ireland.  His  tendencies  were  toward 
reform.  A  prudent  conservatism  was  necessary  as  a  policy  ;  but  his  drift 
was  toward  the  principles  of  the  very  men  who  had  been  expelled  from  the 
House  and  imprisoned! 

The  lull  that  followed  the  coiip  of  the  2d  of  March  was  elusive  and 
transient.  It  gave  the  government,  however,  an  opportunity  to  proceed 
with  its  enactments  bearing  on  the  Irish  question.  The  Land  Bill  was 
taken  up  and  passed.  With  this  it  was  hoped  to  stop  the  throat  of  Irish 
clamor  ;  but  not  so.  The  sop  was  thrown  to  Cerberus  too  late.  He  would 
now  have  more.  Ten  years  before  the  Land  Bill  of  1881  would  have  been 
taken  by  the  Irish  as  the  greatest  boon.  Now  it  was  regarded  as  little  better 
than  an  insult.  Their  great  leaders  and  champions  were  imprisoned. 
Progressive  ideas  had  sprung  up  with  the  agitation,  and  the  cry  was  now 
raised  for  the  absolute  nationalization  of  the  Irish  land. 

This  cry  signified,  of  course,  should  It  prevail,  the  destruction  of  the 
very  principle  of  English  landlordism.  The  system  of  foreign  land  tenure 
became  more  and  more  precarious.  The  poverty  of  the  people  was  such 
that  they  could  no  longer  pay  rents  if  they  would,  and  their  temper  was 
such  that  they  would  no  longer  pay  them  if  they  could.  There  was  almost 
universal  refusal  to  pay,  and  a  consequent  reign  of  violence  and  outrage 
ensued.  Life  and  property  were  alike  imperiled.  Evictions  began  on  the 
one  side  and  resistance  on  the  other.  At  the  close  of  1881  and  the 
beginning  of  1882  there  was  a  condition  of  general  revolt.  In  a  single 
month  in  the  following  summer  no  fewer  than  five  hundred  and  thirty-one 
outrages  were  reported  against  the  system  of  foreign  landlordism  and  those 
who  were  trying  to  uphold  it. 

For  a  while  the  government  sought  to  stay  the  tide,  but  without  much 
avail.  On  the  20th  of  October,  1881,  a  proclamation  was  issued  declaring 
the  Irish  Land  League  to  be  an  illegal  and  criminal  association  per  se. 
This  declaration  gave  opportunity  to  the  authorities  to  proceed  against  the 
adherents  of  the  League  where  and  whenever  found.  The  Coercion  Bill,  at 
the  time  of  its  adoption,  was  recognized  by  the  government  as  a  temporary 
expedient.  It  was  limited  in  the  time  of  its  operation  and  was  to  expire 
with  October  of  1882. 

The  years  we  are  here  considering  were  marked  with  several  hitherto 
unknown  social  expedients  which  the  contending  parties  adopted  in  their 
battles.  One  of  these  we  have  just  noticed  in  the  assumption  by  the 
Speaker  of  the  House  of  Commons  of  the  right  to  declare  the  end  of 
debate  against  the  wishes  of  an  obstructive  minority.  It  was  at  this  time 
that  Irish  wit  and  necessity  invented  the  boycott.  The  expedient  so  called 
was  a  sort  of  social  and  industrial  persecution  directed  against  those  who 
should  incur  the  displeasure  of  the  masses.     The  boycott  was  discovered  in 


5^4 


LIFE    AND    TI.MliS    UF    WJLLIA.M     K.    GLADSTONE. 


the  fall  of  1880.  A  certain  Captain  Boycott,  agent  of  Lord  Erne,  near 
Lough  Mask,  on  the  borders  of  Galway  and  Mayo,  was  a  collector  of  rentals 
for  his  superior.  In  this  relation  he  got  the  animosity  of  the  tenants  and 
of  the  L^nd  League.  The  word  was  given  by  the  League  that  Boycott's 
servants  should  leave  him ;  that  no  laborer  should  remain  in  his  emplo)- 
ment ;  that  the  shopkeepers  of  the  neighborhood  should  supply  him  with 
nothing,  not  even  necessaries  ;  and  these  orders  were  enforced  with  threats 
from  the  Invisible  Empire  against  any  who  should  disregard  them. 

Captain  Boycott  and  his  family  found  themselves  unexpectedly  cut  off 


FIGHT   BETWEEN   LAND   LEAGUERS   AND   POLICE. 


from  intercourse  with  the  people  around  them.  Their  domestics,  except  two 
or  three,  quit  their  service,  and  those  who  hesitated  were  threatened.  The 
sisters  of  the  captain  were  obliged  to  drive  with  arms  in  their  hands  to 
considerable  distances  in  order  to  secure  the  necessaries  of  life.  A  contin- 
gent of  police  at  length  arrived,  but  these  were  about  to  be  overpowered 
when  a  body  of  troops  came  with  artillery  to  put  down  violence.  The  vio- 
lence, however,  was  of  a  kind  not  to  be  reached.  It  was  simply  negative 
and  intangible.  Captain  Boycott  held  out  courageously  until  late  in  the 
year,  when  he  was  obliged  to  give  up  the  unequal  contest  and  leave  the 


FIRST    BATTLE    FOR    HOME    RULE. 


165 


neighborhood.  This  peculiar  Irish  discovery  soon  diffused  itself  as  both  a 
fact  and  a  name  to  many  parts  of  the  disturbed  country,  and  afterward  to 
nearly  all  countries  where  like  situations  existed. 

The  life  of  William  E,  Gladstone  was  adorned  with  a  thousand  pleasant 
incidents.  He  was  made  the  recipient  of  many  favors  and  testimonials. 
His  home  at  Hawarden  Castle 
was  a  museum  of  the  tokens  of 
regard  which  he  had  received  in 
the  course  of  his  lone  life  from 
his  fellow-citizens  and  from  friends 
and  societies  in  foreign  lands.  In 
August  of  1 88 1  a  testimonial  was 
made  to  the  prime  minister  by 
his  constituents  of  Greenwich. 
The  electors  of  New  Cross,  Dept- 
ford,  and  Woolwich  combined  in 
the  presentation  of  a  chair  to  their 
favorite  leader.  It  is  customary 
in  England,  on  occasions  of  ex- 
citement and  enthusiasm,  for  the 
electors  to  "  chair  "  their  represent- 
atives ;  that  is,  to  put  them  in  a 
chair  and  bear  them  aloft  in  pro- 
cession. Mr.  Gladstone  at  this 
time  was  in  his  seventy-second 
year,  and  it  was  doubtful  whether 
the  usual  "chairing"  would  be 
appropriate  for  one  of  his  years 
and  dignity.  To  change  the  pro- 
gram a  fish  dinner  was  given  at 
the  Hotel  Trafalgar,  in  Green- 
wich, on  August  1 7,  and  a  magnifi- 
cent chair  was  presented  to  the 
prime  minister  as  his  seat  at  the 
feast.  The  wood  was  of  heart  of 
oak  and  the  chair  was  upholstered 
with  light-brown  morocco  and 
bands  of  blue.  The  carving  was  emblematical  and  was  beautifully  executed. 
The  inscription  was  set  in  a  wreath  of  carved  roses,  thistles,  shamrocks,  and 
leeks,  these  being  the  symbols  of  England,  Scotland,  Ireland,  and  Wales. 
The  inscription  on  the  back  of  the  chair  was  as  follows :  "  Presented  to  the 
Right    Honorable    William    Ewart    Gladstone,    M.P.,    First    Lord    of   the 


THE   GREENWICH    MEIsrORIAL    CHAIR. 


566  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLAIJSTONE. 

Treasury  ;  together  with  an  address  by  the  Liberals  of  the  Borough  of 
Greenwich  and  the  Liberal  clubs  of  the  neighborhood,  in  testimony  of  their 
high  appreciation  of  the  priceless  services  rendered  by  him  to  the  country, 
and  in  remembrance  of  the  proud  distinction  he  conferred  upon  the  borough 
as  its  representative  in  Parliament  from  1868  to  1880.     August,  1881." 

Mr.  Gladstone  in  these  troublous  years  spoke  frequently  to  the  ques- 
tions of  the  day.  His  position  was  that  violence  and  lawbreaking  in  Ireland 
should  first  be  suppressed  at  all  hazards,  and  afterward  suitable  legislation 
undertaken  to  relieve  the  distresses  of  that  country.  Mr.  Forster,  Chief 
Secretary  for  Ireland,  was  assailed  in  unmeasured  terms  for  what  appeared 
to  the  government  to  be  the  honest  discharge  of  duty,  but  which  seemed  to 
the  Irish  party  to  be  outrageous  tyranny.  They  gave  the  chief  secretary 
the  name  of  "  Buckshot "  Forster,  and  held  him  up  to  popular  contempt. 
Mr.  Gladstone,  speaking  at  Leeds  in  October  of  1881,  said:  "Amidst  diffi- 
culties which  rarely  have  been  equaled,  and  with  the  recollection  of  splendid 
services  personally  rendered  to  the  people  of  Ireland  from  pure,  disinter- 
ested, individual  philanthropy  in  the  early  days  of  his  youth,  Mr.  Forster 
represents  in  Ireland  that  cause  which  I  hope  will  triumph.  I  hope  it  will 
triumph.      I  have  not  lost  confidence  in  the  people  of  Ireland." 

Then  continuing,  the  prime  minister  denounced  the  Land  League  and 
Mr.  Parnell,  saying  of  the  latter  that  he  who  had  "  made  himself  the  head  of 
the  most  violent  party  in  Ireland,  and  who  had  offered  the  greatest  tempta- 
tions to  the  Irish  people,  desired  to  arrest  the  operation  of  the  act — to  stand 
as  Aaron  stood,  between  the  living  and  the  dead  ;  but  to  stand  there,  not  as 
Aaron  stood,  to  arrest,  but  to  spread  the  plague.  .  .  .  If  the  law,  purged 
from  defects  and  from  every  taint  of  injustice,  is  still  to  be  repelled  and 
refused,  and  the  first  conditions  of  political  society  are  to  be  set  at  naught, 
then  I  say,  without  hesitation,  the  resources  of  civilization  against  its  ene- 
mies are  not  yet  exhausted." 

Among  the  bitterest  opponents  of  the  government  at  this  time  was  the 
Irish  leader,  John  Dillon,  who  repaid  the  government  speakers  for  their 
strictures  with  whole  volleys  of  detractions  and  anathema.  His  speeches  at 
this  period  are  marked  with  such  vituperation  as  could  hardly  be  equaled 
even  in  the  day  of  ancient  cursing.  Mr.  Dillon  cursed  Mr.  Forster.  He 
cursed  Mr.  Gladstone  as  the  father  of  the  Coercion  Act.  He  defied  the 
government  to  arrest  him.  He  urged  the  Irish  to  leave  nothing  undone 
that  might  be  done  in  resistance  to  the  hateful  legislation.  Finally  he  said, 
"  If  you  want  earnestly  and  like  men  to  carry  out  the  policy  of  the  League, 
you  must  learn  to  know  that  the  only  way  in  which  you  have  got  to  revenge 
yourselves  or  to  protect  yourselves  against  such  acts  of  tyranny  is  to  attack 
the  men  whom  you  have  the  power  to  attack;  and  whenever  you  see  a  man, 
no  matter  what  his  profession   in   life,  helping  a  landlord  who  does  a  thing 


FIRST    BATTLE    FOR    HOME    RULE. 


567 


like  that,  let  the  Land  League  of  Tipperary  follow  him  through  every  turn- 
ing of  his  life,  let  them,  if  they  can,  ruin  him,  as  he  sought  to  ruin  you  in 
your  difficulties."  For  the  utterance  of  these  sentiments  Mr.  Dillon  was 
arrested  on  the  next  day,  and  was  imprisoned  for  several  months,  until  his 
health  was  ruined.  Thus  if  we  view  the  field  at  the  close  of  1881  and  the 
beginning  of  1882  we  find  almost  universal  discontent  and  rebellion  among 


DISTRESS   IN   IRELAND — EVICTION   OF  TENANTS, 


the  Irish,  and  their  leaders  under  arrest  and  in  prison,  with  the  suspension 
of  habeas  corpus. 

It  was  in  this  manner  that  the  great  battle  for  Home  Rule  in  Ireland  was 
begun.  The  government  was  greatly  embarrassed.  The  legislation  which 
was  devised  to  meet  the  emergency  did  not  meet  it.  An  Arms  Bill  was 
passed,  which  provided  for  the  disarmament  of  the  Irish  people;  but  it  could 
be  enforced  only  against  the  better  classes,  and  with  them  there  was  no  neces- 
sity for  its  enforcement.  The  underman  simply  concealed  his  gun  and  con- 
tinued lawless.  There  was  in  all  Ireland  and  throughout  many  of  the  pop- 
ulous districts  of  England  a  ground  swell  favorable  to  the  Irish  cause.  It 
appeared  probable  that  that  cause  would  triumph  under  the  Liberal  leader- 


568  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

ship  ;  but  in  order  that  it  might  be  successful  there  must  be  a  bringing 
together  of  the  Home  Rulers  and  the  Liberals  in  the  common  cause. 

Early  in  1882  Mr.  Gladstone  undertook  the  difficult  feat  of  getting 
the  Home  Rule  leaders  into  his  following.  It  must  be  confessed  that  the 
situation  was  not  auspicious ;  for  those  very  leaders  were  now  imprisoned 
under  the  provisions  of  the  Act  which  the  prime  minister  himself  had  pre- 
pared. Besides,  he  had  many  times  denounced  both  them  and  their  cause. 
Nevertheless,  in  April  of  1882  he  opened  negotiations  with  Mr.  Parnell,  who 
was  still  imprisoned.  It  was  said  that  a  secret  understanding  was  reached 
between  the  two,  and  the  compact  was  designated  in  the  jargon  of  the  times 
as  the  "Treaty  of  Kilmainham."  The  report  got  abroad  that  the  Irish 
leader  would  be  satisfied  with  a  bill  abolishing  arrears  of  rent  in  Ireland 
and  with  a  just  extension  of  tenant  rights.  Under  these  simple  conditions 
he  and  his  following  would  join  the  government  in  the  effort  to  restrain  the 
Land  League  with  its  penumbra  of  lawlessness  from  further  harm.  However 
this  may  be  Mr.  Gladstone  at  this  time  dropped  a  hint  in  the  House  of 
Commons  of  a  new  policy  that  might  be  expected.  It  would  be  found  expe- 
dient, he  Intimated,  to  pacify  the  Irish  by  releasing  the  prisoners. 

This  signified  much,  for  the  Irish  jails  were  literally  filled  with  persons 
who  had  been  arrested  on  suspicion  under  the  provisions  of  the  Coercion 
Bill  and  the  suspension  of  habeas  corpzis.  Hundreds  of  men  of  excellent 
character  were  imprisoned.  It  was  well  known  that  it  was  futile  to  bring 
these  prisoners  to  trial  ;  for  no  Irish  jury  would  convict  one  of  them.  Cer- 
tainly the  government  could  not  keep  them  imprisoned  always,  and  some- 
thing must  be  done  to  break  the  crisis.  There  had  been  times  within  the 
year  when  the  crisis  was  about  to  break  itself.  The  women  of  Ireland,  under 
the  leadership  of  Anna  Parnell,  sister  of  Charles  Stewart  Parnell,  formed  a 
Land  League  of  their  own,  making  such  publications  that  the  Archbishop 
of  Dublin  issued  a  pastoral  letter  denouncing  the  movement.  Hereupon  no 
less  a  personage  than  Bishop  Croke  arose  in  defense  of  the  Ladies'  Land 
League,  and  was  recognized  in  a  triumphal  procession  which  he  made 
through  Ireland  as  holding  the  aegis  of  the  Church  over  the  heads  of  all 
them  who  were  organized  against  the  landlords.  Certainly  a  movement  of 
this  kind  could  no  longer  be  despised.  The  Land  Leaguers,  Home  Rulers, 
and  Irish  faction  In  general  took  the  name  of  the  National  party;  all  of 
which  brought  the  government  to  see  that  there  must  be  a  new  deal  on  the 
whole  issue. 

The  proposition  to  concede  much  to  Parnell  and  his  party  was  taken 
with  many  wry  faces,  and  it  was  evident  that  the  Liberal  party  as  such  was 
loath  to  surrender  to  those  whom  it  had  recently  imprisoned.  Just  at  the 
time  when  it  appeared  that  they  must  surrender  an  unfortunate  circumstance 
occurred  which  came  near  changing  the  history  and  tendency  of  the  times. 


FIRST    BATTLE    FOR    HOME    RULE.  569 

There  had  been  already  many  murders  and  other  crimes  perpetrated  in  Ire- 
land. One  of  the  measures  adopted  to  conciliate  the  Irish  was  the  appoint- 
ment of  Lord  Frederick  Cavendish  to  succeed  William  E.  Forster  in  the 
office  of  chief  secretary.  Mr.  Forster  had  shown  great  antipathy  to  the 
Irish,  or  at  least  to  their  organized  effort  for  Home  Rule.  With  Lord 
Cavendish  was  appointed  as  under  secretary  Mr.  Thomas  Henry  Burke. 
Both  the  new  officials  were  men  of  distinction,  and  were  thought  to  be  in 
the  sympathies  of  the  Irish  people. 

On  the  evening  of  the  6th  of  May,  1882,  Lord  Cavendish  and  Mr. 
Burke  were  driving  in  Phoenix  Park,  Dublin,  when  they  were  attacked  by 
four  murderers,  partly  disguised.  It  seems  that  the  attack  was  first  made 
on  Burke,  whom  Lord  Cavendish  sought  to  defend  ;  but  in  the  melee  both 
gentlemen  were  stabbed  to  death.  Many  persons  were  sitting  or  walking 
near  by  ;  but  the  assassins  were  permitted  to  escape,  or  at  least  did  escape 
from  the  park.  A  quantity  of  gold  coin,  bank  notes,  and  many  valuables 
were  found  on  the  bodies  of  the  murdered  men,  and  it  was  seen  at  a  glance 
that  it  was  a  case  of  political  assassination  pure  and  simple. 

The  event  was  followed  by  an  indescribable  sensation.  Nearly  all  the 
political  leaders  in  England  found  opportunity  to  turn  the  horrible  event  to 
good  account  by  charging  it  to  the  Land  League.  The  real  leaders  of 
that  organization  at  once  published  authoritative  disclaimers,  and  denounced 
the  crime  in  patriotic  terms.  But  the  mischief  was  done,  and  the  Home 
Rule  party  was  made  to  bear  the  odium.  Of  course  the  Land  League  had 
drawn  after  it  the  very  draff  and  offal  of  Irish  discontent.  Crime,  as  it  is 
ever  wont  to  do,  had  become  a  penumbra  around  the  body  of  reform. 

The  liberation  of  Parnell  from  prison  restored  that  remarkable  person- 
age to  the  House  of  Commons,  and  there  he  was  assailed  with  violent  denun- 
ciations. He  was  made  the  bite  noire  of  the  hour  by  those  who  were  anxious 
by  that  means  to  check  the  reformatory  tendency.  The  small  partisans 
attacked  him,  and  he  stood  like  a  boar  against  them.  Indeed,  he  scarcely 
deigned  to  make  answer  when  they  demanded  that  the  hands  of  the  Irish 
Land  League  and  his  own  hands  should  be  washed  of  the  crime  of  murder. 
Parnell  said  in  answer  that  all  defense  of  himself  and  his  party  was  impossi- 
ble in  such  a  court  as  the  English  House  of  Commons.  His  cause  was  pre- 
judged. His  judges  were  his  enemies  and  the  enemies  of  the  Irish  people. 
He  was  not  anxious  to  justify  himself  at  such  a  bar.  Certainly  crime  was 
crime,  by  whomsoever  committed.  For  the  rest,  he  stood  for  the  cause  of 
an  oppressed  people.  He  had  suffered  an  unjust  imprisonment  for  that 
cause  ;  and  now  he  and  his  party  were  maligned  and  slandered. 

This  condition  of  affairs  tended  greatly  to  weaken  the  Liberal  ascend- 
ency. Hardly  could  any  party  steer  safely  through  such  a  maelstrom. 
The  government  had  a  good  working  majority  through  the  whole  of  1882-83  ; 


570 


LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 


LIBERATION   OF   PRISONERS   FROM   IRISH   JAILS. 


FIRST    BATTLE    FOR    HOME    RULE. 


571 


but  whenever  a  by-election  occurred  it  resulted  inv^ariably  in  Ireland  in  a 
gain  of  a  Home  Rule  member,  and  in  England  generally  in  a  gain  for  the 
Conservatives.  This  tendency  continued  without  variation  in  its  results, 
until  the  government  was  at  length  reduced  to  the  necessity  of  going  to  the 
Conservatives  for  incidental  support  of  its  measures,  or  else  appealing  to 
the  Home  Rulers  themselves.  The  latter  had  now  in  view  one  definite 
object,  and  that  was  the  nationalization  of  Ireland.  Whatever  promoted 
this  end  was  a  part  of  their  policy.  Whatever  opposed  it  was  opposed  by 
them. 

The  immediate  sequel  of  the  murder  of  Lord  Cavendish  and  Mr,  Burke 
was  the  bringing  in  of  a  measure  called  the  Prevention  of  Crimes  Bill.  Such 
was  the  temper  of  the  House  that  the  government  made  the  bill  much  more 
severe  than  it  ought  to  have  been.  It  was  proposed  to  carry  the  means  of 
repression  to  the  utmost.  In  fact,  the  measure  was  made  so  cruel  that  it 
could  not  in  any  event  be  carried  into  full  operation.  Nevertheless,  a  greater 
number  of  the  Home  Rulers  voted  for  it  than  voted  against  it.  Mr.  Gladstone 
saw  the  defects  in  the  Crimes  Bill,  but  defended  it  on  the  eround  that  it 
did  not  put  down  such  an  organization  as  the  Land  League,  provided  the 
Land  League  was  an  organization  of  the  kind  indicated  in  its  code  of  prin- 
ciples. He  said  also  that  the  Crimes  Bill  would  have  been  brought  for- 
ward if  the  Dublin  assassinations  had  never  occurred.  He  claimed  that 
there  was  a  vague  and  yet  undeniable  sympathy  abroad  for  the  assassination. 
The  government  was  not  unwilling  to  hear  objections  that  might  be  brought 
against  the  measure  and  consider  the  same  in  committee.  Besides,  the 
Crimes  Bill  was  joined  with  the  Arrears  of  Rent  Bill,  intended  for  the  relief 
of  Ireland.  These  arguments  of  course  prevailed,  and  the  two  measures 
were  carried  by  a  great  majority. 

Just  after  this  event  an  incident  occurred  in  the  House  of  Commons 
tending  to  show  the  slow  movement  of  Mr.  Gladstone's  mind  in  the  certain 
direction  which  he  was  taking.  Mr.  Dillon  delivered  a  speech  on  the  actual 
condition  in  Ireland,  very  truthful  and  very  bitter.  He  went  so  far  as  to 
contemplate  a  scene  of  universal  warfare  in  his  country,  and  in  summing  up 
the  whole  situation  declared  that  it  was  useless  to  legislate  against  Irish 
crimes  and  outrao^es  so  lonor  ^g  eviction  continued  to  work  its  horrible 
results  among  the  tenants. 

To  this  Mr.  Gladstone  replied.  He  said  that  Dillon's  declarations  were 
heartbreaking;  but  he  thanked  him  for  his  frankness.  The  honorable  gen- 
tleman had  raised  an  issue  which  was  now  clear.  On  one  side  was  the  Brit- 
ish government,  and  all  law-obeying  and  law-abiding  men  ;  on  the  other  side 
was  the  honorable  gentleman  who  had  just  spoken.  He  had  told  the  House 
that  it  was  useless  to  denounce  outrage  until  eviction  was  denounced  also. 
But  what  were  evictions  .f*     Eviction  was  a  legal  right.     It  might  involve 


LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE, 


UNIONIST    DEMONSTRATION    IN    BELFAST. 


FIRST    BATTLE    FOR    HOME    RULE.  573 

prejudice  to  a  neighbor,  or  even  moral  guilt.  He  did  not  deny  that  one  for 
the  exercise  of  the  right  of  eviction  might  be  held  guilty  in  the  sight  of  God ; 
but  the  right  existed,  and  was  a  legal  right.  Mr.  Dillon  had  placed  the 
landlord  who  exercised  the  rio-ht  of  eviction  on  the  same  level  with  the 
perpetrator  of  crimes.  Strange  it  is  that  just  such  a  condition  as  that  here 
depicted  by  the  prime  minister  is  always  necessary  in  Great  Britain  before  a 
reform  against  an  existing  abuse  can  be  promoted  ! 

Nevertheless  Mr.  Gladstone  was  himself  moving  steadily  in  the  direc- 
tion of  reform,  and  would  arrive  at  that  end  before  the  majority  of  his 
countrymen.  The  Crimes  Bill  proved  to  be  worse  for  Ireland  than  for 
Great  Britain.  Its  enactment  was  followed  by  the  perpetration  of  several 
murders.  Perhaps  there  was  for  the  time  a  more  orderly  administration  of 
affairs ;  but  it  was  that  kind  of  order  which  sprang  from  terrorism.  Punish- 
ment was  the  order  of  the  day,  and  executions  were  not  infrequent.  The 
Arrears  of  Rent  Bill  was  limited  in  its  provisions  to  holdings  of  thirty 
pounds  a  year,  and  under.  Certain  conditions  were  requisite  before  tenants 
could  avail  themselves  of  the  provisions  of  the  measure.  A  tenant  must 
establish  his  inability  to  pay.  In  certain  cases  the  State  should  pay  one 
half  the  arrearage  and  the  tenant  be  quit  of  the  rest.  Tenants  who  had 
been  evicted  up  to  a  certain  date  should  be  privileged  to  take  advantage  of 
the  new  law,  etc. 

The  year  1883  was  a  trial  of  the  situation  under  the  two  bills  just 
described  ;  but  the  trial  was  of  little  value  to  the  cause  of  peace  and  qui- 
etude. Fresh  outrages  followed  in  Dublin.  On  the  25th  of  November  a 
body  of  detectives  was  attacked  in  that  city,  and  one  of  them  killed.  Soon 
afterward  a  juror  was  assassinated  for  performing  his  duty  in  a  trial.  Mean- 
while, on  the  17th  of  October,  an  Irish  National  Conference  was  held  in 
Dublin  for  the  purpose  of  consolidating  all  factions  and  organizations  into 
one,  to  be  called  the  Irish  National  League.  The  objects  of  this  new  organ- 
ization were  defined  by  Mr.  Parnell  as  being  national  self-government,  land- 
law  reform,  local  self-government,  extension  of  the  parliamentary  and  munic- 
ipal franchises,  and  the  development  and  encouragement  of  the  labor  and 
industrial  interests  of  Ireland.  In  that  country  the  new  organization  of 
political  society  was  accepted,  but  among  the  Irish  in  America  there  was  a 
division  on  the  question. 

The  year  1883  was  otherwise  uneventful  in  Mr.  Gladstone's  life,  and 
indeed  in  the  history  of  England  ;  but  toward  the  end  of  the  year  the 
attention  of  the  government  was  drawn  to  the  consideration  of  a  very 
serious  state  of  affairs  in  Egypt.  In  that  country  war  had  broken  out  and 
English  and  French  fleets  had  been  ordered  to  the  bay  of  Alexandria.  A 
party  of  Nationalists  in  Egypt  set  up  a  provisional  government  and  suc- 
ceeded in   deposing  Khedive  Tewfik  from  power.     Great  Britain  espoused 


574  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

the  cause  of  Tewfik,  and  an  Anglo-Indian  army  thirty  thousand  strong, 
under  command  of  Sir  Garnet  Wolseley,  was  brought  over  from  India  and 
pitched  against  the  National  army,  under  command  of  the  great  leader, 
Ahmed  El  Arabi.  The  forces  of  the  latter  were  routed  and  he  himself 
deported  to  Ceylon.  Financial  control  of  Egypt  was  taken  jointly  by 
England  and  France,  and  in  18S3  the  Khedive  was  restored.  At  this  junc- 
ture, however,  the  popular  cause  was  taken  up  by  the  Prophet  El  Mahdi, 
and  a  war  was  carried  into  the  Soudan  ;  but  the  history  of  the  conflict 
there,  to  the  death  of  Gordon  and  finally  to  the  suppression  of  the  insur- 
rection, is  so  remote  from  our  immediate  subject  that  we  need  not  follow  it 
further. 

It  must  not  be  supposed,  however,  that  the  war  in  Egypt  was  not  a 
distressful  circumstance  to  the  administration.  Mr.  Gladstone  had  least 
strength  on  the  side  of  war.  He  had  his  greatest  strength  on  the  side  of 
economics,  and  more  generally  of  political  sociology.  The  management  of 
affairs  in  the  East  was  subjected  to  bitter  criticism  by  the  opposition.  The 
ministry  was  not  spared  by  high  or  by  low.  The  great  newspapers  thun- 
dered ao-ainst  the  current  management.  Moreover,  a  Russian  army  was  on 
the  frontiers  of  Afghanistan,  menacing  the  peace  again  in  that  far  quarter  of 
the  world.  To  all  this  must  be  added  the  universal  commotion  and  distress 
in  Ireland.  Such  conditions  might  well  embarrass  the  strongest  adminis- 
tration. Mr.  Gladstone  did  not  quail  before  the  difficulties  that  confronted 
him,  but  went  boldly  forward  to  do  the  best  he  could. 

He  first  directed  his  attention  to  the  question  of  again  reforming  the 
franchise.  This  question,  however,  had  to  be  approached  by  stages.  The 
reader  will  remember  that  under  the  old  regime  the  rights  of  the  landlord 
to  all  improvements  except  the  most  transient,  made  on  the  landed  estates, 
were  absolute.  The  tenant  had  no  right  to  anything  he  produced  in  the 
way  of  improvement  on  the  soil,  farm,  barn,  or  homestead.  All  the  while 
he  was  subject  to  a  notice  to  leave,  and  this  involved  the  loss  of  all  his 
improvements.  In  1875  the  Agricultural  Holdings  Act  had  given  permis- 
sion to  landlords  to  contract  themselves  out  of  their  rights  to  improvements, 
but  this  Act  was  of  only  small  benefit.  Being  simply  permissive,  it  enjoined 
nothinor,  demanded  nothincr  for  the  tenant.  For  eio-ht  years  the  Act  con- 
tinned  in  force,  and  was  then  swept  away  by  the  Act  of  1883,  which  provided 
that  a  tenant  on  quitting  his  estate,  but  not  before,  should  be  paid  by  the 
landlord  such  sum  as  fairly  represented  the  value  of  the  improvements  ; 
that  is,  their  value  to  the  succeeding  tenant.  This  Act  was  to  become 
operative  on  the  ist  of  January,  1884. 

As  soon  as  this  question  of  tenant  right  seemed  to  be  fairly  out  of  the 
way  Mr.  Gladstone,  anxious  to  take  up  some  measure  that  might  be  of 
universal  advantacje  and  at  the  same  time   restore  the  waninor  influence  of 


FIRST    BATTLE    FOR    HOME    RULE.  575 

the  administration,  brought  forward  his  Franchise  Bill,  and  on  the  29th  of 
February,  1884,  offered  it  in  the  House  of  Conimons.  His  speech  on  the 
occasion  was  commended  for  its  clearness  and  force.  The  question  at  issue, 
he  said,  had  advanced  so  far  in  public  opinion  that  he  thought  it  unneces- 
sary to  make  a  general  argument  in  support  of  the  proposed  bill.  The  bill 
had  been  brought  forward  under  the  double  motive  of  fulfilling  a  pledge 
and  of  obeying  a  public  demand.  It  was  calculated  for  many  reasons  to 
add  strength  to  the  State.  It  would  hardly  be  necessary  to  argue  the 
expediency  of  such  a  measure  to  those  who  had  themselves  been  enfran- 
chised within  the  last  fifteen  years.  The  advocates  of  an  enlarged  franchise 
in  Great  Britain  had  grown  bold  with  experience.  "  I  am  not  prepared," 
said  Mr.  Gladstone,  "  to  discuss  admission  to  the  franchise  now  as  it  was 
discussed  fifty  years  ago,  when  Lord  John  Russell  had  to  state  with  almost 
bated  breath  that  he  expected  to  add  in  the  three  kingdoms  half  a  million 
to  the  constituencies.  It  is  not  now  a  question  of  nicely  calculated  less  or 
more. 

"  I  take  my  stand,"  he  continued,  "  upon  the  broad  principle  that  the 
enfranchisement  of  capable  citizens,  be  they  few  or  be  they  many — and  if 
they  be  many  so  much  the  better — is  an  addition  to  the  strength  of  the 
State.  The  strength  of  the  modern  State  lies  in  the  representative  system. 
I  rejoice  to  think  that  in  this  happy  country  and  in  this  happy  constitution 
we  have  other  sources  of  strength  in  the  respect  paid  to  the  various  orders 
of  the  State,  in  the  authority  they  enjoy,  and  in  the  unbroken  course  which 
has  been  allowed  to  most  of  our  national  traditions.  But  still,  in  the  main, 
it  is  the  representative  system  which  is  the  strength  of  the  modern  State  in 
general  and  of  the  state  of  this  country  in  particular." 

The  American  reader  must  understand  that  up  to  this  time  a  serious 
discrimination  in  the  suffrage  had  existed  against  the  county  electors  and  in 
favor  of  the  borough  electors.  Householders  in  towns  had  enjoyed  a  great 
advantage  over  those  of  the  country.  Artisans,  miners,  tradesmen  of  the 
rural  towns,  and  those  whom  we  designate  as  farmers,  were  all  disparaged, 
and  to  these  it  was  now  proposed  to  extend  the  same  advantages  and  rights 
which  were  enjoyed  by  householders  in  towns.  All  previous  legislation  in 
favor  of  these  classes  had  worked  well.  Each  enlargement  of  the  right  of 
suffrage  had  been  attended  with  distinct  advantages. 

In  America  it  is  difficult  to  understand  the  British  prejudice  against 
the  agricultural  laborer,  of  whom  Mr.  Gladstone  said  on  this  occasion,  "  If 
he  has  one  defect  it  is  that  he  is  too  ready  to  work  with  and  under  the  influ- 
ence of  his  superiors."  The  prime  minister  went  on  to  describe  what  he 
called  the  affirmative  provisions  of  the  Franchise  Bill.  These  were,  in  the 
first  place,  to  extend  the  ten-pound  rate  to  the  occupation  of  land,  whether 
with    houses    or    without    them,   and,   secondly,  the    creation    of   a  service 


5/6  LIFE    AND    TIMES    UK    WILLIA.M     E.    GLADSTONE. 

franchise,  giving  to  every  man  in  a  dwelling  house,  by  virtue  of  any  office, 
service  or  employment,  the  right  to  vote.  The  speaker  explained  that  the 
former  provisions,  under  the  bill  of  1867,  were  not  to  be  disturbed  except 
where  the  same  right  be  in  conflict  with  the  new  law.  County  franchises  of 
fifty  pounds  were  to  be  abolished.  What  was  known  as  the  salable-value 
franchise  would  be  reduced  from  twelve  pounds  to  ten  pounds  limit.  The 
changes  proposed  should  be  extended  to  Scotland  and  Ireland,  so  that  the 
right  of  suffrage  should  rest  henceforth  on  virtually  the  same  conditions  in 
all  three  kingdoms. 

We  need  not  here  enter  into  the  details  and  applications  of  the  proposed 
measure  or  quote  further  from  the  debates  relative  thereto.  The  usual 
opposition  was  offered  to  the  bill,  which  was  before  the  House  during  the 
spring  of  1884.  On  the  26th  of  June  the  third  reading  was  ordered,  without 
a  division  of  the  House.  On  going  to  the  House  of  Lords  the  bill  was 
rejected,  except  upon  the  condition  of  a  redistribution  of  parliamentary 
seats.  The  majority  in  the  Lords  was  emphatic.  An  effort  was  made  at 
compromise,  the  proposition  being  that  the  Lords  would  accept  the  Fran- 
chise Bill  under  pledge  that  at  the  next  session  a  measure  should  be  passed 
for  a  redistribution  of  seats.  This  was  not  accepted  by  the  ministry  because, 
as  Gladstone  said,  to  do  so  would  be  to  bring  in  a  Redistribution  Bill  with 
a  rope  around  his  neck. 

The  question  was  now  whether  the  House  should  be  prorogued  with 
an  appeal  to  the  country  or  whether  the  government  should  recede  from  its 
chosen  ground  on  the  Franchise  Bill.  The  contention  broke  out  bitterly 
in  Parliament  and  in  the  country.  The  popular  leaders  denounced  the 
House  of  Lords,  Mr.  John  Morley  going  so  far  as  to  say,  "  Be  sure  that  no 
power  on  earth  can  separate  henceforth  the  question  of  mending  the  House 
of  Commons  from  the  question  of  mending  or  ending  the  House  of  Lords !" 
Mr.  Chamberlain  said  in  a  speech  at  Birmingham  :  "  During  the  last  one 
hundred  years  the  House  of  Lords  has  never  contributed  one  iota  to  popular 
liberties  or  popular  freedom,  or  done  anything  to  advance  the  common 
weal,  and  during  that  time  it  has  protected  every  abuse  and  sheltered  every 
privilege.  It  has  denied  justice  and  delayed  reform.  It  is  irresponsible 
without  independence,  obstinate  without  courage,  arbitrary  without  judg- 
ment, and  arroQ^ant  without  knowledee." 

In  this  condition  of  affairs  the  bill  went  over  until  the  autumn,  when  it 
was  again  brought  up  and  discussed.  No  alterations  had  been  made  in  the 
measure.  Nor  were  any  suggested.  Mr.  Gladstone,  however,  was  concilia- 
tory in  his  manner.  He  invited  the  Conservatives  to  join  in  support  of  the 
measure,  and  stated  that  as  soon  as  the  same  should  become  a  law  a  bill 
for  the  redistribution  of  parliamentary  seats  would  be  introduced.  The 
Conservatives  en  masse  voted  against  the  measure,  which,  however,  became 


FIRST    BATTLE    FOR    HOME    RULE. 


577 


a  law  ;  and  on  the  5th  of  December  the  Redistribution  Bill  went  to  the 
second  reading  in  the  House  of  Commons.  This  measure,  like  its  prede- 
cessor, called  for  long  debates.    It  was  carried  beyond  the  holidays  and  into 


JOSEPH    CHAMBERLAIN. 


the  following  year,  not  being  passed  until  after  the  change  in  government, 
in  June  of  1885. 

The  general  effect  of  the  bill  was  to  disfranchise  many  small  boroughs 
and  to  distribute  the  seats  which  they  had  possessed  to  the  larger  boroughs 
and  to  the  counties.  The  voters  of  the  disfranchised  boroughs  were  absorbed 
in  the  larger  districts  in  which  they  were  situated.  All  boroughs  having  a 
population  of  less  than  fifteen  thousand  were  denied  separate  representa- 
37 


578  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

tion,  and  those  between  fifteen  thousand  and  twenty  thousand  should  have 
only  a  single  representative  each. 

The  Vesult  of  the  measure  was  the  disfranchisement  of  eighty-one 
English  boroughs,  two  Scotch,  and  twenty-two  Irish  boroughs,  while  thirty- 
six  of  the  English  and  three  of  the  Irish  boroughs  lost  each  one  representa- 
tive. There  were  some  other  disfranchisements  and  a  number  of  undistributed 
seats  to  be  added,  so  that  the  government  found  itself  in  possession  of  no 
fewer  than  a  hundred  and  seventy-eight  seats  for  redistribution.  These 
were  to  be  given  to  the  counties  and  to  the  large  towns  of  the  United 
Kingdom.  The  total  membership  of  the  House  of  Commons  was  raised 
from  six  hundred  and  fifty-two  to  six  hundred  and  seventy.  Of  the  gain 
England  got  six  seats,  Scotland  twelve,  and  Ireland  none.  The  whole  effect 
was  to  enlarge  the  representation  of  the  counties  and  of  the  larger  towns 
and  cities. 

No  doubt  this  salutary  measure  of  reform  would  under  favorable  cir- 
cumstances have  brought  to  the  Liberal  o-overnment  an  accession  of  strenofth 
and  popularity  ;  but  this  seems  not  to  have  been  the  result.  The  ministry 
was  constantly  attacked  on  the  score  of  its  foreign  policy.  Affairs  abroad 
had  hardly  gone  well  anywhere.  Mr,  Gladstone  was  evidently  annoyed  with 
the  condition.  It  was  believed  by  many  that  after  the  passage  of  the  Redis- 
tribution Act  of  1885  he  was  rather  willing  than  unwilling  that  the  Con- 
servatives should  have  their  way  and  take  the  saddle. 

By  the  beginning  of  summer  the  opposition  was  riding  high.  Matters 
came  to  a  crisis  in  June,  when  Sir  Michael  Hicks-Beach  opposed  with  an 
amendment  a  financial  scheme  introduced  by  Mr.  Childers  on  the  behalf  of 
the  government  to  increase  the  duty  on  distilled  spirits  and  beer.  There 
was  also  a  ministerial  measure  for  equalizing  what  were  called  the  death 
duties  in  such  a  way  as  to  make  the  same  rest  equally  on  land  and  personal 
property.  Landed  property  had  hitherto  been  exempt  from  this  rate,  and 
the  landed  interest  rose  in  arms  against  the  ministerial  proposition.  The 
amendment  offered  by  Sir  Michael  was  carried  against  the  government  by 
a  majority  of  twelve  votes.  Nor  does  it  appear  that  Mr.  Gladstone  was 
unwilling  to  be  beaten.  The  majority  was  small  and  the  issue  not  so 
important  as  to  compel  a  resignation  ;  but  the  prime  minister  chose  to 
regard  it  otherwise,  and  immediately  resigned.  Thus  in  June  of  18S5,  after 
a  five  years'  term  of  service  in  the  highest  and  most  responsible  office  to 
which  a  subject  of  Great  Britain  may  aspire,  Mr,  Gladstone  brought  his 
second  term  as  prime  minister  to  an  end,  thus  devolving  upon  his 
opponents  the  necessity  of  constructing  for  her  majesty  a  new  Conservative 
government. 

A  short  time  before  his  retirement  from  office  Mr.  Gladstone  had  a 
pleasing  personal   duty  to  perform.     On  the  8th  of  January,    1885,   Prince 


FIRST    BATTLE    FOR    HOME    RULE.  579 

Albert  Victor,  Duke  of  Clarence,  heir  to  the  crown  in  direct  succession, 
being  the  oldest  son  of  the  Prince  of  Wales,  reached  his  majority.  The 
event  was  noted  with  interest  by  the  British  public,  by  whom  the  youno- 
prince,  as  well  as  his  brother  George,  Duke  of  York,  was  highly  esteemed. 
Mr.  Gladstone  as  prime  minister  thought  it  proper  to  express  to  the  prince 
his  sentiments  and  congratulations  on  the  occasion,  which  he  did  in  the  fol- 
lowing letter : 

"  Hawarden  Castle,  January  7,  1885. 

"  Sir  :  As  the  oldest  among  the  confidential  servants  of  Her  Majesty,  I 
cannot  allow  the  anniversary  to  pass  without  notice  which  will  to-morrow 
bring  your  Royal  Highness  to  full  age,  and  thus  mark  an  important  epoch 
in  your  life. 

"  The  hopes  and  intentions  of  those  whose  lives  lie,  like  mine,  in  the 
past,  are  of  little  moment,  but  they  have  seen  much,  and  what  they  have 
seen  suggests  much  for  the  future. 

"There  lies  before  your  Royal  Highness  in  prospect  the  occupation,  I 
trust  at  a  distant  date,  of  a  throne  which,  to  me  at  least,  appears  the  most 
illustrious  in  the  world,  from  its  history  and  associations,  from  its  legal  basis, 
from  the  weight  of  its  cares  it  brings,  from  the  royal  love  of  the  people,  and 
from  the  unparalleled  opportunities  it  gives,  in  as  many  ways  and  in  so  many 
regions,  of  doing  good  to  the  most  countless  numbers  whom  the  Almighty 
has  placed  beneath  the  scepter  of  England. 

"  I  fervently  desire  and  pray — and  there  cannot  be  a  more  animating 
prayer — that  your  Royal  Highness  may  ever  grow  in  the  principles  of  con- 
duct and  may  be  adorned  with  all  the  qualities  which  correspond  with  this 
great  and  noble  vocation. 

"  And,  Sir,  if  Sovereignty  has  been  relieved  by  our  modern  institutions 
of  its  burdens,  it  still,  I  believe,  remains  true  that  there  has  been  no  period 
of  the  world's  history  at  which  successors  to  the  Monarchy  could  more 
efficaciously  contribute  to  the  stability  of  a  great  historic  system  dependent 
even  more  upon  love  than  upon  strength,  by  devotion  to  their  duties,  and 
by  bright  example  to  the  country.  This  result  we  have  happily  been  per- 
mitted to  see,  and  other  generations  will,  I  trust,  witness  it  anew. 

"  Heartily  desiring  that  in  the  life  of  your  Royal  Highness,  every  pri- 
vate and  personal  may  be  joined  with  every  public  blessing,  I  have  the 
honor  to  remain.  Sir,  your  Royal  Highness's  most  dutiful  and  faithful 
servant,  W.  E.  Gladstone. 

"  H.  R.  H.  the  Prince  Albert  Victor." 

The  responsibility  of  forming  a  Conservative  government  was  uneasily 
borne.  After  the  death  of  the  Earl  of  Beaconsfield,  on  the  19th  of  April, 
1 88 1,  the  leadership  of  the  Conservative  party  had   been   assigned  to  the 


58o 


LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 


Marquis  of  Salisbury.  To  him,  according  to  the  custom  which  had  now 
become  virtually  constitutional,  the  queen  must  appeal.  He  was  accord- 
ingly sent  for  and  appointed  prime  minister.  He  succeeded  in  forming  a 
Conservative  ministry,  and  in  June  of  1885  became  the  head  of  the  govern- 
ment. For  the  second  time  it  was  thus  the  fortune  of  the  Conservative 
ministry  to  inherit  from  its  predecessor  a  Liberal  measure  for  the  reform  of 
Parliament.     The   Redistribution   Bill,  not  yet  a   law,  was  carried   over  to 


ROBERT   ARTHUR   CECIL,    MARQUIS    OF    SALISBURY. 


Conservative  hands,  and  the  new  government  had  little  difficulty  in  passing 
that  measure  through  its  final  stages. 

The  general  election  was  now  pending,  and  it  was  thought  that  the 
Conservatives  would  be  able  to  make  large  gains.  There  was  not  a  little 
astonishment  when  the  result  showed  for  them  precisely  the  same  number 
(two  hundred  and  fifty-one)  of  members  returned  as  they  had  elected  more 
than  five  years  before.  The  Liberals  returned  three  hundred  and  thirty- 
three  members;  but  the  Home  Rule  contingent  was  now  increased  to  eighty- 


FIRST    BATTLE    FOR    HOME    RULE.  58 1 

six  members,  so  that  the  latter  faction,  now  become  a  veritable  party,  held 
the  balance  of  power.  The  Marquis  of  Salisbury  found  himself  under  the 
immediate  and  overwhelming  necessity  of  securing  the  support  of  the 
Home  Rulers,  in  order  to  conduct  the  government  at  all.  Even  with  their 
full  vote  he  could  command,  on  a  party  question,  only  a  majority  of  four. 
The  support  of  the  Home  Rulers  could  be  counted  on  provided  the  govern- 
ment would  concede  to  them  the  practical  recognition  of  their  demands. 
On  such  condition  they  would  support  anybody,  and  almost  any  cause.  The 
Home  Rule  contingent  was  completely  in  the  hands  of  IVIr.  Parnell,  who 
wielded  it  as  he  would. 

Mr.  Gladstone  went  out  of  office  fully  understanding  the  situation.  He 
may  be  said  to  have  been  once  more  feeling  his  way.  Would  he  himself 
ever  become  a  Home  Ruler?  In  September  of  1885  he  sent  the  customary 
address  to  the  electors  of  Midlothian.  In  this  he  discussed  the  existing  sit- 
uation of  affairs.  He  called  attention  to  the  progress  of  events  in  Ireland, 
to  the  enlargement  of  the  suffrage,  to  the  advantage  which  the  Irish  had 
gained  in  making  known  their  views  in  Parliament,  and  insisting  upon  them. 
He  thought  that  the  principal  grievances  of  the  Irish  people  had  now  been 
removed.  He  hoped  even  that  the  religious  poison  had  been  expelled  from 
the  Irish  body  politic.  Nevertheless,  there  were  still  many  wants  of  Ireland 
to  be  considered.  For  some  reason  that  country  had  lagged  behind  Eng- 
land and  Scotland,  The  power  of  local  self-government  did  not  seem  to 
exist  in  Ireland,  and  yet  that  power  was  the  foundation  of  political  stability. 
The  geographical  position  of  Ireland  and  her  historical  antecedents  sug- 
gested special  claims  on  her  part  to  a  liberal  application  of  the  principle  of 
self-government.  He  thought  that  the  Liberals  of  both  England  and  Scot- 
land must  deduce  their  inspiration  from  higher  fountains  than  those  to  which 
the  Conservatives  were  now  appealing.  Within  certain  limits  the  desire  of 
Ireland  with  regard  to  her  method  of  government  ought  to  receive  the  assent 
of  Parliament.  The  supremacy  of  the  crown  and  the  unity  of  the  empire 
must  be  preserved.  To  recognize  this  principle  was  the  duty  of  every  rep- 
resentative of  the  people.  It  was  necessary  to  settle  in  some  prudent  way 
the  question  that  was  now  uppermost  in  Great  Britain. 

In  conclusion  Mr.  Gladstone  said:  "  I  believe  history  and  posterity  will 
consign  to  disgrace  the  name  and  memory  of  every  man,  be  he  who  he  may, 
and  on  whichever  side  of  the  channel  he  may  dwell,  that,  having  the  power 
to  aid  in  an  equitable  settlement  between  Ireland  and  Great  Britain,  shall 
use  that  power,  not  to  aid,  but  to  prevent  or  retard  it.  If  the  duty  of  work- 
ing for  this  end  cannot  be  doubted  then  I  trust  that,  on  the  one  hand,  Ire- 
land will  remember  that  she,  too,  is  subject  to  the  authority  of  reason  and 
justice,  and  cannot  always  plead  the  wrongs  of  other  days  in  bar  of  submis- 
sion to  them  ;  and  that  the  two  sister  kingdoms,  aware  of  their  overwhelm- 


582  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

ing  Strength,  will  dismiss  every  fear  except  that  of  doing  wrong,  and  will 
make  yet  another  effort  to  complete  a  reconciling  work,  which  has  already 
done  so  much  to  redeem  the  past,  and  which,  when  completed,  will  yet 
redound  to  the  honor  of  our  legislation  and  our  race." 

In  these  utterances  it  was  easy  to  read  between  the  lines.  In  fact,  the 
Conservatives  as  well  as  the  Liberals  thought  that  they  beheld  the  hand- 
writing on  the  wall.  Lord  Salisbury  sought  as  much  as  he  deemed  expedi- 
ent to  advance  in  the  direction  of  what  was  very  vaguely  called  Home  Rule, 
For  a  while  it  was  thought  that  the  ex-prime  minister  and  the  present  head 
of  the  government  would  perhaps  combine  in  the  formulation  of  some  meas- 
ure that  might  express  the  best  thought  of  England  regarding  the  claims  of 
Ireland.  A  report  got  abroad  that  the  question  of  the  expediency  of  the 
union  of  the  two  great  parties  in  such  an  effort  was  debated  in  the  cabinet, 
and  that  Lord  Carnarvon,  Viceroy  for  Ireland,  had  supported  the  proposition. 
He  had  taken  his  present  office  for  a  limited  period,  and  when  his  views  did 
not  prevail  he  resigned.  Lord  Randolph  Churchill  also,  according  to  rumor, 
was  favorable  to  the  proposition  of  a  united  effort  of  the  parties,  and  the 
Marquis  of  Salisbury  himself  was  supposed  to  have  a  leaning  in  that  direc- 
tion. But  the  majority,  to  whom  the  ascendency  of  party  meant  everything, 
opposed  the  suggested  policy,  and  the  opportunity  was  allowed  to  pass. 

If  the  Conservatives  were  thus  embarrassed  with  the  situation  so  also 
were  the  Liberals.  In  that  party  there  were  evidences  of  disagreement. 
There  was  no  unanimity  anywhere  on  the  question  of  Home  Rule,  except 
among  the  Irish  representatives.  ]^Ir.  Gladstone's  precise  attitude  was  un- 
known. Home  Rule  had  never  been  exactly  defined,  and  It  remained  for 
somebody  to  define  It.  It  was  apparent  that  as  soon  as  the  definition  should 
be  ofiven  there  would  be  abundance  of  disag^reement,  and  the  disaofreement 
would  not  be  confined  to  any  party.  Mr.  John  Morley,  an  Independent, 
spoke  at  Chelmsford,  saying  that  he  was  favorable  to  giving  home  rule  to 
Ireland  in  the  way  of  an  Assembly,  to  legislate  for  that  country  on  all  ques- 
tions except  imperial  measures.  The  Parliament  of  Great  Britain  should  be 
Imperial.  As  the  case  now  stood  imperial  legislation  was  Impeded  by- 
obstruction,  and  this  was  done  In  order  to  keep  the  grievances  of  Ireland  In 
the  foreground.  It  was  the  duty  of  the  Liberal  party  to  settle  the  question 
of  Home  Rule,  and  to  do  It  at  once. 

Other  speakers  held  other  views.  Lecky,  the  historian,  said  that  this 
movement  for  local  self-government  in  Ireland  was  really  the  entering  wedge 
for  an  independent  Parliament  In  that  country  and  the  consequent  dismem- 
berment of  the  British  empire.  Other  speakers  held  an  Intermediate  posi- 
tion between  the  two  extremes.  There  were  symptoms  of  a  scale  of  opinions 
reaching  all  the  way  from  zero  to  infinity.  The  only  common  opinion  was 
that  something  must  be  done  for  Ireland.     A  secondary  opinion  was  that  so 


FIRST    BATTLE    FOR    HOME    RULE.  583 

far  as  personal  agency  was  concerned  William  E.  Gladstone  was  more  com- 
petent rtian  any  other  to  prepare  a  scheme  of  home  rule  for  Ireland  that 
might  have  some  chance  of  success. 

That  statesman  was  studying  the  question,  but  for  the  time  he  said 
little.  It  was  thought  that  the  government  would  have  been  glad  to  get  his 
opinions.  He  prudently  stood  aside  in  the  after  part  of  1885  and  awaited 
the  issue.  Indeed,  he  became  reticent.  A  deputation  from  Belfast  was 
about  to  call  upon  him  to  use  his  influence  in  suppressing  the  Land  League 
before  granting  any  measure  of  self-government.  Mr.  Gladstone  replied 
that  he  could  not  become  a  competitor  with  her  majesty's  government  in  the 
matter  of  their  responsibility,  and  that  he  did  not  desire  to  make  proposals 
with  reference  to  Irish  legislation.  The  deputation  accordingly  called  on 
Lord  Salisbury,  and  received  from  him  the  general  assurance  that  the  min- 
isters would  be  true  to  their  responsibilities.  The  prime  minister  put  a  bold 
front  on  the  matter,  and  went  to  his  task  at  the  opening  of  Parliament  Jan-^ 
uary  12,  1886. 

The  address  of  the  queen,  who  opened  the  session  in  person,  was  at- 
tended to  wnth  profound  interest.  All  that  her  majesty  said  about  foreign 
affairs  may  here  be  omitted,  but  the  part  relating  to  Ireland  we  give  in  full. 
"  I  have  seen,"  said  her  majesty,  "with  deep  sorrow  the  renewal  of  the  at- 
tempt to  incite  the  people  of  Ireland  to  hostility  against  the  legislative  union 
between  that  country  and  Great  Britain.  I  am  resolutely  opposed  to  any 
disturbance  of  that  fundamental  law,  and,  in  resisting  it,  I  am  convinced  that 
I  shall  be  heartily  supported  by  my  Parliament  and  my  people.  The  social, 
no  less  than  the  material,  condition  of  that  country  engages  my  anxious 
attention.  Although  there  has  been  during  the  last  year  no  marked  increase 
of  serious  crime  there  is  in  many  places  a  concerted  resistance  to  the  en- 
forcement of  legal  obligations,  and  I  regret  that  the  practice  of  organized 
intimidation  continues  to  exist.  I  have  caused  every  exertion  to  be  used 
for  the  detection  and  punishment  of  these  crimes,  and  no  effort  will  be  spared 
on  the  part  of  my  government  to  protect  my  Irish  subjects  in  the  exercise 
of  their  legal  rights  and  the  enjoyment  of  individual  liberty.  If,  as  my  in- 
formation leads  me  to  apprehend,  the  existing  provisions  of  the  law  should 
prove  to  be  inadequate  to  cope  with  these  growing  evils,  I  look  with  confi- 
dence to  your  willingness  to  invest  my  government  with  all  necessary 
powers." 

The  tone  of  her  majesty's  address  was  a  surprise  to  all  who  were  not  in 
the  secrets  of  the  government.  It  appears  that  Lord  Salisbury  had  con- 
cluded, as  between  the  two  extremes  of  bearing  a  whip  or  an  olive  branch 
to  Ireland,  to  take  the  whip.  He  would  try  the  whip  first.  Of  course  the 
prime  minister  had  devised  the  address.  It  was  thought  for  the  time  that 
the    scare    about  undoing  what    her  majesty  called   the    legislative    union 


584  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

between  Great  Britain  and  Ireland  could  be  used  to  good  advantage,  and 
that  the  rest  might  be  accomplished  by  coercion,  pure  and  simple.  Cer- 
tainly there  was  no  conciliation,  much  less  home  rule,  in  the  address  from 
the  throne. 

No  sooner  had  the  address  been  read  than  the  question  was,  "  What 
shall  we  do  with  it  ?  "  Neither  Mr.  Gladstone  nor  other  leaders  of  his  party, 
nor  yet  they  of  the  Irish  party,  would  make  any  formal  statement  of  their 
views.  Hereupon  it  was  proposed  by  Lord  Randolph  Churchill  to  postpone 
the  debate  on  the  address  and  to  take  up  the  question  of  the  new  rules  of 
parliamentary  procedure.  He  also  said  that  the  bringing  in  at  this  juncture, 
or  any  juncture,  of  a  measure  for  the  establishment,  or  permission  to  estab- 
lish, a  separate  Parliament  for  Ireland  was  not  to  be  anticipated.  When 
this  was  proposed — as  it  seemed  to  be  the  putting  aside  of  the  Irish  ques- 
tion altogether — Mr.  Gladstone  said  that  the  questions  relating  to  Ireland 
,were  of  an  extraordinary  kind,  and  must  be  met. 

There  was  a  refusal  to  close  the  debate  on  the  address.  Mr.  Sexton, 
speaking  for  the  Irish  party,  said  that  they  who  were  favorable  to  coercion 
had  no  cause.  Boycotting  was  an  alternative  of  outrage.  The  members  of 
the  National  party  represented  fully  five  sixths  of  the  Irish  people.  It  was 
the  duty  of  Ireland  to  declare  and  to  redeclare  her  grievances.  This  done, 
the  responsibility  rested  with  the  government.  There  was  no  intention  on 
the  part  of  the  Irish  Nationalist  party  to  attack  the  integrity  of  the  British 
empire.  The  supremacy  of  the  crown  was  acknowledged,  and  the  paramount 
authority  of  the  English  Parliament. 

In  answer  to  these  arguments  Mr.  Hugh  Holmes,  x\ttorney-General 
for  Ireland,  contended  that  the  paragraph  in  the  queen's  speech  was  fully 
justified.  It  had  proceeded  from  the  fact  that  there  was  a  systematic  at- 
tempt in  Ireland  to  adopt  a  remedy  for  alleged  grievances  outside  of  the 
law.  This  could  not  be  tolerated.  Amendments  were  offered  to  the  ad- 
dress by  several  members,  and  some  of  these  were  nearly  being  adopted. 

The  event  soon  showed  that  the  government  really  intended  to  take  a 
high-handed  course  on  the  Irish  question.  On  the  26th  of  January,  1886, 
notice  was  given  of  the  intention  to  introduce  a  bill  for  the  suppression  of 
the  National  League  and  other  associations  that  were  regarded  as  dan- 
gerous. The  other  parts  of  the  measure,  the  prime  minister  said,  would  in- 
clude the  protection  of  life  and  property,  the  restoration  of  public  order,  and 
a  clause  for  the  prevention  of  intimidation.  Already,  however,  it  was  believed 
that  the  government  was  going  straight  to  defeat.  There  was  confusion  in 
both  parties,  and  neither  could  be  confident  of  success.  There  was  a  dispo- 
sition on  the  part  of  the  Conservatives  to  hold  up  their  policy  by  declaring 
that  it  was  intended  to  support  public  order  in  Ireland.  Mr.  Chamberlain, 
at  the  head  of  one  division  of  the  Liberal  party,  made  a  speech  declaring  it 


FIRST    BATTLE    FOR    HOME    RULE.  585 

to  be  the  duty  of  the  Liberals  at  the  earHest  practicable  moment  to  give 
attention  to  the  condition  of  agricultural  laborers.  He  said  that  he  approved 
of  a  bill  for  local  representation  in  Ireland,  with  officers  elected  by  the  tax- 
payers, and  a  provision  for  taking  land  for  public  purposes  at  a  fair  price, 
whether  the  landlords  were  assenting  or  not. 

This  view  of  the  case  was  supported  by  Mr.  Jesse  Collings,  who  offered 
an  amendment  expressing  regret  that  no  measures  were  announced  by  her 
majesty  "  for  the  present  relief  of  these  classes  [meaning  the  proprietors  of 
small  holdings],  and  especially  for  affording  facilities  to  the  agricultural 
laborers  and  others  in  the  rural  districts  to  obtain  allotments  and  small 
holdings  on  equitable  terms  as  to  rent  and  security  of  tenure."  This 
amendment  was  supported  by  Mr.  Chaplin  and  opposed  by  a  member  of 
the  government. 

At  this  juncture  Mr.  Gladstone  appeared  in  the  arena,  saying  that  he 
also  was  in  favor  of  the  amendment  as  a  remedy,  without,  however,  entering 
into  a  discussion  of  agricultural  depression  or  the  difficulties  of  the  peasant 
proprietaries.  He  thought  it  essential,  in  order  to  revive  social  and  industrial 
life  in  the  local  communities  of  Ireland,  that  some  measure  of  the  kind  pro- 
posed by  Mr.  Collings  should  be  adopted  as  a  remedy.  Other  members  spoke 
on  the  question,  and  when  the  vote  was  taken  it  showed  a  majority  of  no 
fewer  than  seventy-nine  against  the  government.  The  decision  of  the  House 
was  fatal  to  the  existing  order.  The  government  of  Lord  Salisbury  expired 
after  an  existence  of  only  eight  months,  and  all  things  were  again  in  the  sea.* 

The  next  question  was  the  constitution  of  a  new  Liberal  government. 
How  should  that  be  done.?  Expressions  were  heard  favorable  to  a  coalition 
cabinet,  but  this  view  did  not  prevail.  Mr.  Gladstone  was  sent  for  by  the 
queen,  and  for  the  third  time  accepted  the  place  of  prime  minister.  Earl 
Spencer  was  named  as  President  of  the  Council;  Mr.  Childers  as  Home 
Secretary  ;  the  Earl  of  Rosebery  as  Foreign  Secretary  ;  Earl  Granville  as 
Secretary  for  the  Colonies;  Earl  Kimberley  as  Secretary  for  India;  Mr. 
Campbell-Bannerman  as  Secretary  for  War;  Sir  William  Vernon  Harcourt 
as  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer;  the  Marquis  of  Ripon  as  First  Lord  of 
the  Admiralty;  Mr.  Trevelyan  as  Secretary  for  Scotland;  Mr.  Mundella  as 
President  of  the  Board  of  Trade;  Mr.  Joseph  Chamberlain  as  President 
of  the  Local  Government  Board;  Mr.  Charles  Russell  as  Attorney-General: 
Mr.  John  Morley  as  Chief  Secretary  for  Ireland;  and  the  Earl  of  Aberdeen 
as  Lord  Lieutenant  of  Ireland. 

*A  thing  sufficiently  humorous  was  said  about  the  downfall  of  the  first  Salisbury  ministiy.  Mr.  Gladstone, 
in  his  speech  just  before  that  event,  had  said  something  on  the  right  of  an  Irishman  to  pasture  his  cow  on  three 
acres  of  ground.  The  remark  was  used  only  in  illustration,  and  the  particular  point  which  was  in  discussion  was 
not  important.  But  the  government  went  to  pieces  on  Mr.  Collings's  amendment,  and  did  it  under  the  influence  of 
Gladstone's  speech.  For  this  reason  the  saying  got  abroad  that  the  Salisbury  government  had  been  overthrown 
-on  the  question  of  three  acres  and  a  coti<  ! 


586 


LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 


GREAT  LABOR  PARAUK  IX  TRAFALGAR  SQUARE. 


FIRST    BATTLE    FOR    HOME    RULE.  587 

In  the  constitution  of  this  cabinet  Mr.  Gladstone  adhered  to  the  Liberal 
ranks,  but  conceded  much  to  differences  of  opinion.  There  were  not  wanting 
an  antagonism  of  views  between  certain  of  the  ministers,  but  it  was  believed 
that  these  might  be  reconciled.  As  to  the  Irish  cause,  the  sentiment  of  the 
government  relative  thereto  might  be  known  from  the  appointment  of  John 
Morley  as  Chief  Secretary  for  Ireland.  He  was  a  Radical  Liberal,  favor- 
able to  Home  Rule. 

In  the  interval  necessary  for  the  reelection  of  the  ministers  a  serious 
labor  trouble  occurred  in  London.  The  workingmen  had  been  of  late  sub- 
jected to  great  wrongs  by  the  prevailing  system.  Employers,  by  organiza- 
tion and  the  use  of  sweaters  for  middlemen,  had  succeeded  in  reducing 
wages  and  imposing  long  hours  on  labor,  to  such  an  extent  that  the  masses 
who  occupied  the  tenement  houses  were  barely  able  to  subsist.  There 
appeared  at  this  time  an  organization  called  the  "  Revolutionary  Social 
Democratic  League."  This  society  had  its  propaganda  and  its  speakers. 
The  draff  and  offal  of  London  were  drawn  in  the  wake.  A  meeting  of 
about  twenty  thousand  persons  was  held  in  Trafalgar  Square.  It  appears 
that  the  Revolutionary  Democrats  got  possession  of  this  meeting  and 
secured  an  adjournment  of  its  more  orderly  elements.  They  then  marched 
to  Hyde  Park,  and  on  the  way  stoned  the  windows  of  clubhouses,  shops, 
and  even  private  residences.  In  Piccadilly  they  plundered  the  shops  and 
destroyed  what  they  could  not  take  with  them. 

The  meetincr  in  Hyde  Park  was  a  mob,  and  the  crowd  there  gathered 
went  away  committing  outrages  in  the  streets.  The  police  were  not  out  in 
sufficient  numbers  to  reduce  the  riot.  It  was  estimated  that  property  to 
the  value  of  about  fifty  thousand  pounds  was  destroyed  by  the  rioters.  The 
chief  commissioner  of  police  resigned  under  pressure  of  public  opinion,  and 
the  new  officer  who  came  in  his  place  adopted  measures  of  unreasonable 
severity,  going  so  far  as  to  interdict  processions  and  public  meetings  alto- 
gether. It  was  found  subsequently  that  the  criminal  rioters  had  not  been 
workingmen,  but  merely  the  offscouring  of  society  availing  itself  of  an 
opportunity. 

During  the  pendency  of  the  ministerial  elections  there  was  much  public 
speaking.  Already  Mr.  Gladstone  was  assailed  both  from  within  and  with- 
out the  party  of  which  he  was  the  head.  The  speakers  against  him,  including 
Mr.  Chamberlain,  were  able  to  appeal  to  almost  every  political  prejudice 
prevailing  in  Great  Britain.  The  general  contention  was  that  the  measure 
of  Home  Rule  which  the  prime  minister  was  said  to  contemplate  would  lead 
to  the  disruption  of  the  British  empire.  It  was  not  long  until  Mr.  Cham- 
berlain and  Mr.  Trevelyan,  holding  this  opinion,  resigried  their  places  in  the 
government.  It  was  thus  that  the  faction  sprang  into  existence  which  was 
"designated  as  the  Liberal  Union  party.     Meanwhile  Mr.  Gladstone  kept  his 


588  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

own  counsel  and  went  ahead  with  the  excogitation  of  his  plan  for  a  system 
of  Home  Rule.  We  may  pass  over  as  of  small  importance  the  budget 
which  was  presented  at  the  ensuing  session  of  Parliament  by  the  chancellor 
of  the  exchequer.  It  covered  the  usual  specifications  of  revenue  and 
expenditure,  and  differed  not  much  in  its  manner  from  the  usual  budgets  of 
the  last  fifteen  years. 

We  now  arrive  at  the  8th  of  April,  1886.  William  E.  Gladstone  was  in 
his  seventy-seventh  year.  His  health  had  not  of  late  been  as  good  as  usual ; 
but  his  rugged  constitution  still  supported  him  at  an  age  when  most  men 
would  have  shrunk  from  all  onerous  duty  and  responsibility.  Not  so,  how- 
ever, with  the  son  of  Sir  John  Gladstone.  He  came  to  the  ordeal  with  the 
manner  and  strength  of  a  man  in  middle  life.  On  the  date  mentioned, 
memorable  in  our  times,  he  brought  into  the  House  of  Commons  his  Home 
Rule  Bill.  This  he  arose  and  propounded  in  a  great  address  which  held  the 
attention  for  more  than  three  hours,  not  only  of  the  British  Parliament,  not 
only  of  the  United  Kingdom,  but  of  almost  the  whole  civilized  world.  The 
speech  was  disseminated  by  telegraph  throughout  the  country  and  under 
the  sea.  Allowing  for  the  difference  in  time  it  was  read  with  interest  in 
verbatim  report  by  thousands  in  America  on  the  hour  of  its  delivery,  or 
even  before  ! 

In  the  speech  the  prime  minister  set  forth  with  his  usual  cogency  the 
provisions  and  applications  of  his  bill.  In  the  beginning  he  expressed  his 
regret  at  the  impossibility  of  entering  on  the  whole  of  the  Irish  policy  of  the 
government.  The  land  question  was  a  part  of  that  policy,  and  was  insepa- 
rable therefrom.  The  first  duty  of  the  government,  the  prime  minister 
thought,  was  to  face  the  Irish  question  boldly,  to  come  to  close  quarters 
with  it,  to  make  no  feints  in  the  matter  that  was  now  uppermost.  For  his 
part  he  would  set  forth  without  disguise  the  proposals  which  he  believed 
would  establish  the  right  relations  between  Great  Britain  and  Ireland.'  He 
thought  the  agrarian  crimes  in  the  latter  country  to  be  no  more  than  a 
symptom  of  a  deep-seated  evil,  and  a  coercive  legislation  was  at  best  no 
more  than  repressive,  and  not  curative.  If  like  conditions  had  existed  in 
England  and  Scotland  like  consequences  would  have  followed.  The  time 
had  now  come  when,  if  coercion  should  be  still  employed  as  a  remedy,  it 
must  be  of  a  different  kind.  It  must  be  downright  coercion,  enforced  with 
resolute  purpose  and  with  the  sword.  The  people  of  Great  Britain  would 
not  resort  to  such  coercion  until  they  had  exhausted  every  other  expedient. 

The  speaker  went  on  to  show  by  statistics  that  all  crimes,  includ- 
ing agrarian  crimes,  in  Ireland  had  fallen  off  under  natural  causes  during 
the  last  sixty  years  to  a  remarkable  degree.  This  betterment  had  not 
been  effected,  therefore,  by  the  exceptional  coercive  legislation.  This  he 
proved  by  the  facts  ;  for  at  those  times  when  coercion  had  been  adopted  the 


FIRST    BATTLE    FOR    HOME    RULE. 


589 


"//:/'/, '/'MH:Wil!'ll'!:i'IIH:ii'l"i'l'll'llil'l'::i      1  '  II 


lliillll'lii  I  III  1 1  III     I        I  I  III  I  iiiiiiliiii  llli'i 


INTRODUCTION    OF    HOME    RULE    BILL— GLADSTONE'S    PERORATION. 


590  LIFE    Ai\D    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

improvement  had  not  been  as  considerable  as  at  other  times.  Coercion 
was  no  more  than  a  medicine.  Neither  men  nor  nations  could  subsist  on 
medicine.  The  situation  in  Ireland  as  it  respected  agrarian  crime  was 
habitual,  and  the  coercive  laws  had  not  cured  the  habit. 

The  speaker  next  took  up  the  question  of  preserving  the  unity  of  the 
empire.  Coercion  did  not  conduce  to  the  imperial  unity.  Neither  did  it 
restore  social  order  and  promote  liberty.  The  question  was  how  to  recon- 
cile the  imperial  unity  with  diversity  of  legislation.  This  question  had  been 
solved  by  Great  Britain  in  the  case  of  Scotland.  It  had  also  been  solved 
by  other  nations.  It  would  not  tend  to  dismemberment  of  the  imperial 
union  to  allow  of  legislative  diversity.  The  proposition  which  the  govern- 
ment w^ould  now  propose  was  based  on  this  principle.  He  would  propose 
the  creation  of  a  legislative  body  to  sit  in  Dublin,  to  legislate  for  Ireland, 
and  to  control  the  administration  in  that  country.  As  to  the  empire,  its 
unity  should  be  secured.  Minorities  should  be  protected.  Those  who  were 
interested  in  land  (meaning  the  landlords),  those  in  the  civil  service,  and 
those  attached  to  the  government,  and  what  might  be  designated  as  the 
Protestant  minority  in  Ireland,  should  all  receive  adequate  protection.  The 
condition  of  affairs  in  Ulster  presented  peculiar  difficulties  ;  but  this  also 
should  be  met  with  adequate  remedies. 

In  the  constitution  of  the  Irish  Parliament  the  Irish  peers  and  the  Irish 
members  in  the  British  Parliament  could  not  be  allowed  to  continue  in  the 
latter  relation.  The  general  power  of  taxing  should  be  relinquished  by  the 
imperial  Parliament,  and  should  go  to  the  Parliament  of  Ireland.  Customs 
and  excise  duties  should  be  retained  by  the  imperial  government.  The 
new  legislative  body,  though  having  autonomy  in  Irish  affairs,  should  be 
still  under  the  prerogative  of  the  crown.  It  should  have  no  power  to  legis- 
late on  questions  affecting  the  crown  or  the  succession.  Questions  of 
national  defense,  questions  touching  the  army  and  the  navy,  and,  indeed,  all 
imperial  questions,  would  be  out  of  the  province  of  the  Irish  legislature, 
Foreio-n  questions,  colonial  questions,  and  questions  proposing  to  endow  or 
establish  any  religious  body  should  be  forbidden. 

The  Irish  Parliament  should  consist  of  two  Houses,  each  having  power 
of  a  veto  over  the  acts  of  the  other.  There  should  be  twenty-eight  repre- 
sentative peers,  and  seventy-five  other  members  on  whom  a  iproperty  quali- 
fication should  rest  of  two  hundred  pounds  a  )ear.  These  should  be  chosen 
for  a  period  of  ten  years,  and  the  electors  should  have  a  qualification  of 
twenty-five  pounds  a  year.  The  second  order  of  representatives  should  be 
two  hundred  and  four  in  number,  of  which  one  hundred  and  three  should  be 
borough  members,  county  members,  and  university  members,  and  one  hun- 
dred and  one  others  should  be  variously  distributed.  The  term  period  in 
this  House  should  be  five  years.     The  chief  executive,  that    is,  the  viceroy, 


FIRST    BATTLE    FOR    HOME    RULE. 


591 


592  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

should  remain  as  at  present  until  some  other  order  should  be  established. 
The  viceroy  should  have  his  privy  council,  and  should  not  be  subject  to 
change  with  the  legislative  government.  If  the  present  judges  should  re- 
tire they  might  be  pensioned.  The  present  constabulary  should  be  con- 
tinued under  the  existing  authority.  Ultimately  the  police  regulations  of 
Ireland  should  be  determined  by  the  legislature  of  that  country.  The  finan- 
cial aspects  of  the  question  were  then  discussed,  and  a  demonstration  offered 
that  the  new  arrangement  would  be  equitable  to  all  concerned. 

In  presenting  this  great,  almost  revolutionary,  scheme  of  reform,  Mr. 
Gladstone  stood  boldly  to  his  colors.  The  interest  was  great ;  but  there 
were  many  signs  that  the  plan  proposed  would  not  be  acceptable  to  a  ma- 
jority of  the  House.  The  defection  from  the  Liberal  ranks  continued. 
Many  went  off  with  Mr.  Chamberlain,  on  the  ground  that  the  measure 
proposed  tended  to  disintegrate  the  British  empire.  Public  meetings  began 
to  be  held.  Some  members  of  the  government  took  part  in  them,  and  many 
of  the  Liberal  following  became  timid  in  the  support  of  the  Home  Rule 
Bill.  The  tone  of  the  Liberal  newspapers  was  uncertain,  and  the  general 
alarm  was  no  doubt  heightened  by  the  triumphant  and  outspoken  gratula- 
tions  of  the  Home  Rulers  and  Radical  Liberals. 

Mr.  Gladstone  made  haste  to  follow  up  the  Home  Rule  Bill  with  his 
Land  Purchase  Bill  which  had  been  promised.  This  was  presented  in  the 
House  of  Commons  on  the  i6th  of  April.  It  was  set  forth  as  a  necessary 
part  of  the  general  scheme  of  reform.  It  contemplated  the  compensation  of 
absentee  landlords,  to  whose  tyrannous  exactions  the  greater  part  of  the  evils 
of  Ireland  must  be  referred.  For  nearly  two  centuries  this  tribe  of  landlords 
had  become  more  and  more  detached  from  their  tenants.  They  hardly  ever 
visited  their  own  estates.  They  managed  them  by  agents  who  conducted 
the  rent  offices  without  regard  to  the  interests  of  any  but  their  masters.  Mr. 
Gladstone  set  forth  in  full  the  provisions  of  the  Land  Purchase  Bill,  so  that 
the  whole  question  was  now  before  Parliament  and  the  people. 

On  the  loth  of  May  the  prime  minister  moved  the  second  reading  of 
the  Home  Rule  Bill,  and  the  debates  became  excited  and  prolonged.  The 
Irish  leaders  announced  their  adhesion  to  the  scheme,  and  declared  that 
they  and  the  Irish  people  would  faithfully  observe  the  letter  and  the  spirit 
of  the  proposed  Act.  The  opponents  of  the  bill  still  held  to  the  main  point 
that  the  measure  would  impair  the  imperial  union.  Lord  Hartington,  Mr. 
Chamberlain,  and  Mr.  Goschen  were  of  this  following,  and  their  party  grew. 
The  debate  continued  until  the  7th  of  June,  and  was  concluded  by  Mr.  Glad- 
stone. The  question  then  went  to  a  division,  and  the  bill  was  defeated  by 
a  majority  of  thirty.  The  analysis  of  the  vote  showed  that  the  Liberal 
Unionists  had  gone  over  in  a  body  to  the  Conservatives,  thus  putting  the 
government  in  almost  a  hopeless  minority.     It  remained  either  to  resign  or 


FIRST    BATTLE    FOR    HOME    RULE.  593 

go  to  the  country.  The  latter  course  was  adopted,  and  on  the  25th  of  June 
Parliament  was  dissolved.  Her  majesty's  message  said  that  the  dissolution 
was  declared  "  in  order  to  ascertain  the  sense  of  my  people  upon  the  impor- 
tant proposal  to  establish  a  legislative  body  in  Ireland  for  the  management 
of  Irish  as  distinguished  from  imperial  affairs," 

So  the  two  parties,  or  rather  the  four  parties,  appealed  to  the  country. 
It  was  an  epoch  of  Gog  and  Magog.  On  the  14th  of  June,  Mr.  Gladstone 
sent  his  address  to  the  electors  of  Midlothian,  saying  among  other  things: 
"  Some  method  of  governing  Ireland  other  than  coercion  ought,  as  I  thought, 
to  be  sought  for  and  mig^ht  be  found.  I  therefore  viewed  without  re^-ret  the 
fall  of  the  late  cabinet,  and  when  summoned  by  her  majesty  to  form  a  new 
one  I  undertook  it  on  the  basis  of  an  anticoercion  policy,  with  the  fullest 
explanation  to  those  whose  aid  I  sought  as  colleagues  that  I  proposed  to 
examine  whether  it  might  be  possible  to  grant  to  Ireland  a  domestic  legis- 
lature, under  conditions  such  as  to  maintain  the  honor  and  consolidate  the 
unity  of  the  empire.  Two  clear,  positive,  intelligible  plans  are  before  the 
world.  There  is  the  plan  of  the  government  and  there  is  the  plan  of  Lord 
Salisbury.  Our  plan  is  that  Ireland  should,  under  well-considered  conditions, 
transact  her  own  affairs.  His  plan  is  to  ask  Parliament  for  new  repressive 
laws  and  to  enforce  them  resolutely  for  twenty  years,  at  the  end  of  which 
time  he  assures  us  that  Ireland  will  be  ready  to  accept  any  gifts  in  the  way 
of  local  government  or  the  repeal  of  coercion  laws  that  you  may  wish  to 
give  her." 

All  classes  of  political  ideas  were  now  advanced  with  vehemence  and 
many  of  them  supported  with  great  ability.  On  the  whole  the  tide  set 
against  the  Liberals,  or  at  least  against  the  Gladstonian  Liberals,  and  the 
result  showed  the  defeat  of  the  o-overnment  and  its  overthrow.  Three 
hundred  and  sixteen  Conservatives  were  returned,  against  onfe  hundred  and 
ninety-one  Gladstonians.  Seventy-eight  Liberal  Unionists  were  chosen, 
and  eighty-five  Parnellites.  The  combined  force  of  the  latter  and  the 
Gladstonians  was  only  two  hundred  and  seventy-six.  Of  those  who  had 
voted  for  the  Home  Rule  Bill,  numbering  two  hundred  and  thirty-one, 
thirty-eight  failed  of  reelection.  The  decision  was  emphatic,  and  Mr.  Glad- 
stone at  once  resigned  his  office,  advising  the  queen  to  appoint  Lord  Salis- 
bury in  his  stead. 

This  was  accordingly  done,  though  not  without  some  shuffling.  A 
movement  was  made  to  have  Lord  Hartington  named  as  prime  minister, 
with  the  intention  of  forming  a  coalition  cabinet.  It  is  said  that  Lord 
Salisbury  offered  to  take  office  in  such  a  government,  but  Lord  Hartington 
declined  the  proposal,  and  Lord  Salisbury  became  for  the  second  time 
premier.  Sir  Stafford  Northcote  (afterward  Lord  Iddesleigh)  was  appointed 
Foreign  Secretary;  Mr.  William  Henry  Smith,  Secretary  for  War ;  Lord 
38 


594 


LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 


George  Hamilton,  First  Lord  of  the  Admiralty;  Sir  Michael  Hicks-Beach, 
Secretary  for  Ireland;  the  Marquis  of  Londonderry,  Viceroy  of  Ireland; 
Lord  Ashbourne,  Irish  Chancellor;  Mr.  Henry  Matthews,  Home  Secretary; 
and  Lord  Randolph  Churchill,  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer. 

Parliament  was  again  convened  in  August  of  1886.    The  Conservatives 
had  the  government,  but  they  hardly  knew  what  to  do  with  it.     Presently, 


LORD  RANDOLPH  CHURCHILL. 


however,  the  purpose  was  openly  advanced  of  reducing  Ireland  to  submission 
by  coercive  measures.  A  military  force  was  sent  into  the  west  and  south 
of  that  country  to  put  down  what  was  called  the  reign  of  terror.  It  was 
given  out  as  a  supposed  panacea  that  the  government  would  expend  a  con- 
siderable sum  in  improving  the  drainage  of  the  country!  Thus  the  Irish 
whale  was  to  be  satisfied  with  a  tub ! 

Mr.    Gladstone    reappeared    in    the    House    and    spoke    a    few    words 


FIRST    BATTLE    FOR    HOME    RULE.  595 

seriously  and  temperately  on  the  attitude  of  the  government,  and  then  took 
no  further  part  for  the  present  in  what  was  done.  He  decided  on  a  short 
vacation,  and  soon  set  out  with  his  family  for  a  tour  in  Bavaria.  Before 
leaving  the  country,  however,  he  made  two  additional  publications,  which 
were  written  with  his  accustomed  vigor  and  patriotism.  The  first  was 
entitled  The  History  of  an  Idea.  In  this  pamphlet  he  recited  the  story 
of  the  growth  and  development  of  the  notion  of  local  self-government  for 
Ireland.  The  second  publication  was  entitled  Lessons  of  the  Election. 
In  this  he  sought  to  show — and  did  show — by  analysis  the  exact  character 
of  the  verdict  recently  rendered  by  the  British  nation.  He  demonstrated 
that  the  vote  in  Scotland  was  in  the  ratio  of  three  to  two  in  favor  of  the 
Home  Rule  policy.     In   Ireland  the  same  verdict  was  rendered  in  the  ratio 

■of  four  and  a  half  to  one,  and  in  Wales  by  five  to  one.  In  England,  how- 
ever, the  decision  was  the  other  way,  the  opponents  of  Home  Rule  having 
three  hundred  and  thirty-six  representatives  against  one  hundred  and 
twenty-nine   in  favor  of  that  measure.     Mr.  Gladstone  held  stoutly  to  the 

■correctness  of  his  policy  and  predicted   that  the  same  would  ultimately  be 

.approved  by  public  opinion,  not  only  in  Ireland,  Scotland,  and  Wales,  but  in 
England  also. 

At  this  time  there  were  many  public  expressions  in  Mr.  Gladstone's 
favor.  It  was  seen  that  the  election  had  turned  upon  fear,  the  fear  of  the 
English  voters,  which  had  been  aroused  by  the  appeals  of  the  Conserva- 
tives. In  many  public  assemblies  the  Gladstonian  policy  was  enthusiastically 
approved,  so  that  it  may  be  said  that  Mr.  Gladstone  retired  from  his  third 
ascendency  enveloped  in  the  good  will  of  the  people. 

The  year  1887  completed  the  fiftieth  year  of  the  reign  of  Victoria. 
Such  an  event  was  not  likely  to  go  by  unobserved.  Not  often  had  it  hap- 
pened in  English  history  that  the  fiftieth  year  of  a  sovereign's  reign  could 
be  celebrated.  The  reigning  queen  was  popular  with  her  subjects,  particu- 
larly with  the  upper  third  of  English  society.  Her  semicentennial  was 
duly  celebrated  wherever  the  banner  of  St.  George  is  the  ensign  of 
authority.  The  acme  of  the  fetes  was  on  the  21st  of  June,  that  being  the 
anniversary  of  the  queen's  accession.  The  principal  scene  of  the  home 
celebration  was  in  the  Abbey  of  Westminster.  Thither  on  the  appointed 
day  came  the  queen,  under  conduct  of  her  sons,  her  sons-in-law,  and  her 
grandsons  as  a  guard  of  honor.  About  ten  thousand  persons  participated 
in  the  ceremonies  at  the  Abbey.  Representatives  were  present  with  con- 
gratulations from  all  the  reigning  houses  in  Europe  and  from  most  of  the 
governments  in  the  New  World.  London  was  splendidly  decorated,  as  were 
all  the  principal  cities  of  the  United  Kingdom.  The  poet  laureate,  who  had 
now  been  raised  to  the  peerage  with  the  title  of  Baron  Tennyson,  honored 

:.the  occasion  with  a  personal  poem  addressed  to  her  majesty.    Erom  London 


59^ 


LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 


FIRST    BATTLE    FOR    HOME    RULE.  597 

as  a  center  the  jubilee  spirit  extended  to  all  the  British  colonies  of  the  world. 
From  the  foothills  of  Burmah  to  the  mountains  of  British  Columbia,  looking 
down  to  the  Pacific,  the  queen's  name  and  reign  were  commemorated  with 
congratulations  and  festivals. 

The  government  party  in  Parliament  was  now  made  up  of  the  Conserv- 
atives proper  plus  the  Liberal  Unionists.  That  party  was  opposed  by  the 
Liberals  proper  plus  the  Parnellites.  But  the  government  was  strong 
enough  to  carry  out  its  policy  with  a  strong  hand.  No  protests  could 
prevail  against  it.  Some  members  of  the  cabinet  refused  to  follow  in  the 
wake  and  resigned.  Sir  Michael  Hicks-Beach  was  of  this  number,  and  his 
place  was  assigned  to  Mr.  Arthur  James  Balfour,  who  became  Secretary  for 
Ireland  in  1887  and  remained  in  office  for  four  years.  It  was  under  his 
reign  that  the  policy  of  repression  was  carried  out. 

A  series  of  measures  was  now  enacted,  one  of  the  principal  of  which 
was  the  Criminal  Law  Amendment  Bill,  introduced  by  Mr.  Balfour,  on  the 
2 1  St  of  March,  1887.  The  general  intent  of  the  bill  was  to  confer  on  the 
authorities  extraordinary  powers  of  suppression,  as  it  respected  persons,  asso- 
ciations, and  public  meetings.  In  fact,  the  proposed  law  was  inimical  to  civil 
liberty,  and  this  fact  was  pointed  out  in  the  debates.  In  the  month  of  April 
a  great  demonstration  was  held  in  Hyde  Park,  in  remonstrance  against  the 
bill,  and  a  hundred  thousand  people  were  said  to  have  been  present.  By 
the  time  the  measure  came  to  a  vote  Mr.  Gladstone  had  returned  from  the 
Continent,  and  was  in  the  House  on  the  occasion.  He  did  not  speak,  but 
when  the  vote  was  taken  he  arose  and  walked  out  to  be  counted  with  the 
Home  Rulers.  His  appearance  and  his  vote  were  loudly  cheered  by  his  fol- 
low^ers.  The  government  measure  was  carried,  and  in  the  July  following 
eighteen  counties  in  Ireland  were  put  under  the  severe  provisions  of  the 
Act. 

On  the  31st  of  March  in  this  year  the  Conservative  Irish  Land  Bill  was 
brought  before  the  Commons.  A  commission  had  been  sent  out  to  inquire 
into  the  condition  of  Ireland,  and  this  commission  had  made  its  report,  which 
was  used  as  the  basis  of  the  proposed  law^  Mr.  Parnell  declared  when  the 
measure  was  read  that  the  scheme  of  the  enemies  of  Ireland  was  now 
revealed  in  all  of  its  native  dishonesty.  The  debate  was  hot,  but  the  gov- 
ernment measure  was  put  through  the  House  and  became  a  law.  We  may 
remark  that  such  bills  were  never  seriously  questioned  in  the  House  of 
Lords. 

As  soon  as  the  Land  Bill  was  passed  Mr.  Balfour  made  a  proclamation 
to  the  effect  that  the  National  League  was  itself  a  dangerous  association, 
coming  under  the  provisions  of  the  Crimes  Bill,  and  might  therefore  be  sup- 
pressed. The  veteran  Gladstone  was  at  this  time  on  the  alert  for  what  he 
regarded  as  the  dangerous  movements  of  the  government.     On  the  25th  of 


598 


LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTOIME. 


August,  1887,  he  moved  an  address  to  the  crown,  praying  for  the  withdrawal 
of  Mr.  Balfour's  proclamation.  He  said  that  before  such  a  proclamation 
could  be  justified  the  evidence  of  such  justification  must  be  laid  before  Par- 
liament. The  Lord  Lieutenant  of  Ireland  had  failed  to  present  such  evidence. 
Li  the  absence  of  it  the  proclamation  amounted  to  the  destruction  of  all  the 
safeguards  of  liberty.     The  proclamation  was  not  by  its  own  terms  against 


ARTHUR  JAMKS    BALFOUR. 

crime  in  Ireland,  but  it  was  directed  to  combinations  of  the  people,  as 
though  all  such  combinations  were  in  themselves  criminal.  Trial  by  jury 
and  the  habeas  corpus  were  both  proclaimed  away  by  Mr.  Balfour.  Every- 
thing was  left  to  the  irresponsible  will  of  the  Irish  executive. 

To  this  Mr.  Balfour  made  answer,  bringing  forward  the  report  of  the 
late  commission,  as  though  that  partial  document  were  the  justification  of 
his  proceedings.     He  openly  declared  that  it  had  not  been  deemed  expedi- 


FIRST    BATTLE    FOR    HOME    RULE.  599 

ent  to  denounce  the  Land  League  until  aftei'-  the  passage  of  the  Land  Act. 
Now  it  was  expedient  to  declare  the  National  League  itself  a  dangerous 
association.  Mr.  Gladstone's  protest  was  without  avail,  and  the  govern- 
ment measure  was  sustained. 

We  here  enter  the  epoch  when  the  Irish  leaders  were  subjected  to  the 
greatest  persecutions.  Not  one  of  them  was  spared.  Every  pretext  was 
eagerly  sought  to  arrest  them  and  get  them  into  prison  or  exile.  Mr. 
O'Brien,  Mr.  Dillon,  Mr.  Mandeville,  and  indeed  every  leader  against  whom 
any  pretext  of  prosecution  could  be  devised,  was  arrested  or  driven  from 
the  country.  Mr.  Parnell  was  the  object  of  the  bitterest  hatred.  His  abili- 
ties were  preeminent  above  the  rest.  His  patriotism  was  unblemished,  his 
influence  great  and  increasing.  Just  after  the  passage  of  the  Crimes  Act 
and  the  Irish  Land  Bill  of  1887  the  Conservative  powers  concentrated  their 
fire  on  Parnell,  and  the  acme  was  reached  by  the  publication  in  the  London 
Times  of  a  series  of  articles  entitled  "  Parnellism  and  Crime." 

The  purpose  of  the  publications  was  to  prove  that  Parnell  had  been 
connected  with  the  assassins  of  Lord  Cavendish  and  Mr.  Burke,  in  Phoenix 
Park.  In  order  to  establish  this  monstrous  conclusion  a  letter  was  pub- 
lished in  facsimile,  bearing  Mr.  Parnell's  signature,  in  which  it  was  clearly 
indicated  that  he  was  connected  with  the  crimes  referred  to  and  in  sympa- 
thy with  the  perpetrators.  The  letter  was  addressed  to  Patrick  Egan,  well 
known  in  America,  who  was  at  that  time  in  Nebraska,  Mr.  Egan  at  once 
sent  a  telegram  declaring  that  he  had  never  received  such  a  letter.  Mr.  Par- 
nell in  the  House  of  Commons  denounced  it  as  an  atrocious  falsehood. 
Nevertheless,  the  Times  persisted  in  indorsing  the  letter  and  the  charges  it 
contained.  The  document  was  of  such  a  character  as  to  bear  its  own  brand 
of  infamy  ;  but  this  was  overlooked  by  those  whose  interest  it  was  to  hound 
down  the  orreat  Irish  leader. 

The  letter,  that  is,  the  body  of  the  letter,  occupied  the  first  page  of  a 
sheet  of  note  paper,  and  was  crowded  at  the  bottom,  as  though  there  were 
want  of  space  to  complete  what  the  writer  was  saying.  Then  at  the  top  of 
xk\Q.  fourth  page  of  the  note  paper  were  the  words,  "Yours  very  truly,  Chas. 
S.  Parnell."  The  letter  in  this  form  would  not  have  been  admitted  in  any 
court  in  Christendom  as  substantial  evidence  against  a  dog ;  but  no  denial 
on  Mr.  Parnell's  part  could  stay  the  tide  of  vituperation  and  slander. 

Not  to  be  thus  destroyed,  Mr.  Parnell  brought  suit  against  the  London 
Times  iox  damages  in  the  sum  of  a  hundred  thousand  pounds,  the  charges 
being  malicious  libel.  The  cause  came  on  for  trial  before  Lord  Chief  Jus- 
tice Coleridge  and  a  special  jury  in  the  Queen's  Bench.  Meanwhile  the  man, 
Richard  Pigott,  from  whom  the  Times  had  obtained  the  forged  letter,  was 
brought  to  London  to  testify.  An  examination  into  his  character  proved 
that  he  was  an  unmitigated  scoundrel.     The  fact  was  presently  brought  out 


6oo 


LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 


that  the  Times  \\2.d.  paid  \\\\i\  for  the  letter  two  thousand  five  hundred  and 
thirty  pounds  !  Presently,  in  the  house  of  Mr.  Labouchere,  Pigott  confessed, 
in  the  presence  of  witnesses,  that  he  had  forged  the  letter  himself     Fearing 


CHARLES    STEWART    PARNELL. 


to  come  to  cross-examination,  he  fled  to  Madrid,  where,  on  the  loth  of  March, 
1889,  he  rid  the  world  of  a  monster  by  killing  himself 

It  was  quite  useless  to  try  such  a  cause  before  Lord  Chief  Justice  Cole- 
ridge. On  the  3d  of  February,  1890,  when  the  cause  was  called,  the  counsel 
for  the  Times  indicated  to  the  judges  that  it  was  not  necessary  to  argue  the 
question  of  damages.  They  told  their  honors  that  Mr.  Parnell  had  agreed 
to  accept  five  thousand  pounds  as  damages,  the   Times  to  pay  all  the  costs 


FIRST    BATTLE    FOR    HOME    RULE.  6oi 

of  the  proceedings.  A  verdict  was  rendered  accordingly,  and  Mr.  Parnell 
went  out  in  triumph.  Nor  may  we  pass  from  this  episode  and  dismiss  from 
consideration  Charles  Stewart  Parnell  without  an  expression  of  profound 
regret  for  the  domestic  difficulties  in  which  he  was  presently  involved,  and 
the  advantage  which  was  taken  thereof  to  effect  his  political  ruin.  In 
November  of  1890  Captain  O'Shea  was  granted  a  divorce  from  his  wife  on 
allegations  affectinof  Mr.  Parnell's  relations  with  her.  The  circumstances 
were  of  the  kind  most  available  in  political  warfare,  and  at  the  instance  of 
the  Liberal  leaders  Mr.  Parnell  was  deposed  from  the  leadership  of  his  own 
party,  although  he  refused  to  accept  that  verdict  and  received  the  support  of 
a  large  and  faithful  minority  unto  the  date  of  his  death,  October  6,  1S91. 

Between  the  years  1888  and  1891  Mr.  Gladstone  appeared  from  time  to 
time  in  the  House  of  Commons,  where  he  was  always  received  with  those 
marks  of  distinction  which  are  the  due  of  recoonlzed  o-reatness.  Occasion- 
ally  he  spoke,  always  with  moderation  and  always  with  his  accustomed  force 
and  eloquence.  When  the  report  of  a  commission  which  had  been  appointed 
to  investigate  the  accusers  of  Mr.  Parnell  and  his  friend,  but  had  turned 
about  to  investigate  the  complainants,  was  made  in  Parliament  Mr.  Glad- 
stone spoke  emphatically  on  the  subject,  demanding  that  the  entries  on  the 
books  of  the  House  should  contain  expressions  of  regret  for  the  groundless 
and  scandalous  charges  which  had  been  made  against  the  Irish  members. 
His  demand,  however,  was  refused,  and  the  report  of  the  partial  commission 
was  accepted  by  the  usual  majority,  not,  however,  until  Lord  Randolph 
Churchill  had  flared  up  and  denounced  the  course  of  the  Qrovernment  as  tor- 
tuous  and  iniquitous. 

In  December  of  1889  Mr.  Gladstone  completed  his  eightieth  year.  The 
event  was  celebrated  at  Hawarden  and  was  observed  at  many  other  places. 
He  was  still  sound  in  mind  and  body.  He  exhibited  In  his  public  and 
private  intercourse  the  manners  which  he  had  borne  for  more  than  half  a 
century,  showing,  however,  a  measure  of  care  and  prudence  which  were  quite 
necessary  at  that  advanced  period  of  his  life.  He  was  still  able,  out  at 
Hawarden,  to  go  abroad  an  his  estate,  to  gather  flowers,  of  which  he  was 
always  fond,  and  to  chop  wood.  His  ability  In  this  respect  was  remarked 
upon  In  a  tradition  almost  as  universal  as  that  relating  to  Abraham  Lincoln 
as  a  splitter  of  rails. 

The  aged  statesman  meanwhile  kept  up  an  unabated  Interest  In  public 
affairs,  and  whenever  an  Issue  of  importance  was  on  in  Parliament  there  was 
William  E.  Gladstone  In  the  midst.  The  administration  of  the  Marquis  of 
Salisbury  extended  from  August  of  1886  to  August  of  1892,  a  period  of  six 
years.  It  was  a  long  government,  not  wanting  In  ability.  Its  policy  was 
throughout  reactionary;  the  whole  force  of  the  administration  was  directed 
to   the   obliteration,  as  far  as  possible,  of  the  Irish  cause.     It  may  not  be 


602 


LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 


denied  that  this  course  was  in  a  large  measure  successful.  The  policy  of 
repression  prevailed.  The  condition  of  the  Irish  tenants  was  hardly  less 
deplorable  when  order  was   restored  by  force  than  it  had  been  before.     In 


"THE   WOODCHOPPER   OF    HAWARDEN. 


fact,  the  g-overnment  of  Lord  Salisbury,  according  to  the  old  proverb,  made 
a  waste  in  Ireland  and  called  it  peace. 

The  immigration  of  the  Irish  people  to  America  seemed  to  be  about 
the  only  remaining  remedy.  Landlordism  was  reestablished  in  almost  its 
pristine  abusiveness  and  injustice.  Eviction  flourished  again,  and  the  con- 
stable was  reinforced  with  the  battering  ram.  The  power  of  Great  Britain, 
exercised  by  a  Conservative    ministry  in   full    accord  with    the    crown,  and 


FIRST    BATTLE    FOR    HOME    RULE.  603 

administered  for  the  greater  part  of  the  period  by  Mr.  Balfour,  was  meas- 
ured out  in  Ireland  with  rod  and  cord.  The  protests  of  the  aged  states- 
man of  Hawarden  and  his  fellow-Liberals  were  disregarded — though  not 
disregarded  in  America.  It  cannot  be  doubted  that  in  our  own  country  a 
great  part  of  the  popularity  which  William  E.  Gladstone  always  enjoyed 
must  be  attributed  to  the  fact  that  he  was  the  conspicuous  champion  of 
Home  Rule  in  Ireland — a  cause  that  has  always  appealed  to  our  people,  and 
not  in  vain. 

By  the  year  1890  Mr.  Gladstone,  now  for  more  than  three  years  in  op- 
position, had  strong  hopes  of  recovering  the  reins  from  the  hands  of  the 
Conservatives.  Doubtless  he  was  no  longer  actuated  by  personal  ambitions, 
but  the  failure  of  the  Home  Rule  Bill  in  1886  was  a  thorn  in  his  flesh.  It 
began  to  be  seen  that  the  by-elections  were  favorable  to  the  beaten  cause. 
The  majority  of  one  hundred  and  thirteen  which  the  Conservatives  had  been 
able  to  muster  at  the  beginning  of  the  Salisbury  ascendency  was  now  seen 
to  crumble  away  little  by  little.  Moreover,  the  Liberal  Unionists  began  to 
lose  ground.  Sir  George  Trevelyan,  Mr.  Caine,  and  other  leaders  returned 
to  the  Liberal  fold.  Everything  seemed  to  be  going  well  when  that  unfor- 
tunate affair  of  Parnell's  was  blown  abroad,  and  the  suit  of  Captain  O'Shea 
was  instituted,  naming  the  Irish  leader  as  co-respondent. 

Parnell  hereupon  put  himself  in  the  attitude  of  saying  that  his  domestic 
difficulty  was  not  the  concern  of  those  who  were  associated  with  him  in 
public  life  ;  but  such  is  the  temper  of  the  British  nation  that  Parnell's 
dilemma  was  precisely  the  thing  to  be  used  ad  odiitvi,  not  only  against  him- 
self, but  also  against  his  political  associates.  It  was  of  course  very  becoming 
in  the  London  Times,  which  had  recently  paid  more  than  two  thousand 
pounds  for  what  was  on  the  face  of  it  a  forged  communication,  had  published 
it  as  genuine,  and  had  then  paid  five  thousand  pounds  damages  for  the 
crime,  now  to  proclaim  that  Parnell,  for  his  sin,  should  be  driven  from  the 
Irish  leadership,  and  that  Gladstone,  the  Liberal  leader,  could  no  longer 
associate  with  him  in  public  affairs. 

This  hollow  cant  was  taken  up  with  great  effect  by  all  the  Conservative 
organs  and  reuttered  by  the  speakers  of  that  following.  It  was  so  effective 
that  on  the  24th  of  November,  1890,  Mr.  Gladstone  deemed  it  prudent  to 
write  a  letter  to  Mr.  John  Morley,  saying  that  he  had  arrived  at  the  con- 
clusion that  Mr.  Parnell  should  resign  the  leadership  of  the  Irish  party, 
and  indicating  Mr.  Justin  McCarthy  as  his  successor.  The  letter  was  not 
intended  to  be  public,  but  through  some  bungling  it  got  to  the  public  and 
precipitated  on  Parnell  the  necessity  of  resigning  or  of  breaking  with  the 
Liberals,  upon  whom  his  hopes  for  the  success  of  his  cause  depended.  He 
would  not  resign,  but  was  deposed  by  a  majority.  A  large  part  of  the  Irish 
party  stood  with  him  in  the  day  of  his  downfall,  and,  as  we  have  said,  to  the 


6o4 


LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 


day  of  his  death.  The  Irish  party  was  thus  rent  in  twain,  and  one  of  those 
forces  upon  which  Mr.  Gladstone  had  depended  was  almost  destroyed  by 
the  schism.  Such  was  the  discouragement  of  the  situation  that  it  was  be- 
lieved he  himself  would  retire  finally  from  the  conflict.  But  he  had  other 
opinion  of  his  duty,  and  still  hoped  for  success. 

It  was  at  this  juncture,  when  Mr.  Gladstone  was  in  his  eighty-first  year, 


^^-^5f?^!^^ 


JUblirM     MLCARTHY, 


that  a  bill  was  brought  into  the  House  of  Commons  to  remove  the  restric- 
tion by  which  Roman  Catholics  were  interdicted  from  the  ofifices  of  Lord 
Chancellor  and  Lord  Lieutenant  of  Ireland.  This  was  the  last  remnant  of  the 
ancient  discriminations  against  adherents  of  the  mother  Church,  and  Mr, 
Gladstone  came  to  the  support  of  the  measure  as  a  part  of  the  policy  to 
which  he  had  devoted  the  greater  part  of  his  public  life.  When  it  was 
known  that   he  would  speak,  the    House,  although   it  was  in  the  afternoon, 


FIRST    BATTLE    FOR    HOME    RULE. 


60: 


was  crowded,  as  it  always  was  when  Gladstone  was  to  be  the  central  figure 
On  this  occasion  he  spoke  for  more  than  an  hour,  with  no  symptom  of  weak- 
ness or  indication  of  that  break  in  logical  power  that  frequently  comes  to  the 
aged.  It  was  declared  at  the  time  that  the  speech  in  question  would  have 
made  an  ordinary  parliamentary  reputation  sufficient  for  a  lifetime.  The 
appeal,  however,  could  not  prevail  against  the  large  Conservative  majority. 
At  the  close  of  this  year  the   Liberal  leaders  were   for  the  most  part 


ELFXTION    SCENE   OF    I J 


discouraged,  but  Mr.  Gladstone  was  not  of  that  number.  He  still  waited 
for  the  reaction  of  public  opinion  which  he  felt  sure  would  soon  arrive.  The 
incidental  elections  continued  to  indicate  a  failure  of  the  Conservative 
strength.  The  year  1891  was  the  epoch  of  the  decline  of  that  party.  Mr. 
Balfour  for  one  thing  wearied  at  last  of  beating  down  the  Irish,  and 
resigned  his  place  as  chief  secretary.  Hereupon  he  was  made,  as  if  in 
reward,  the  first  lord  of  the  treasury  and  Conservative  leader  of  the  House 
of  Commons.  Meanwhile,  the  Liberals,  Mr.  Gladstone  included,  began  to 
challenge  the  ministry  on  an  appeal  to  the  country.  Lord  Salisbury 
seemed  to  fear  such  a  movement.  He  persisted  in  his  policy,  but  could 
hardly  conceal  from  himself  the  reaction  that  was  coming  on. 


6o6  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

The  reaction  worked  in  both  ways:  It  was  positive  as  it  regarded  a 
more  favorable  estimate  of  the  Ghidstonian  project  of  Home  Rule  for  Ireland. 
It  was  negative  in  that  it  no  longer  sustained  the  repressive  policy  of  the 
government.  It  was  not,  however,  until  the  28th  of  June,  1892,  that  the 
dissolution  of  Parliament  was  finally  declared  and  a  general  appeal  made  to 
the  people.  Mr.  Gladstone  himself  went  Into  the  contest.  His  constituency 
of  Midlothian  had  never  abandoned  him.  Nearly  all  the  leading  Liberals 
were  again  in  the  field  and  waged  an  aggressive  campaign.  It  was  a  win- 
ning- fio-ht.  The  election  went  against  the  Conservatives,  who  were  able  to 
return  only  two  hundred  and  sixty-nine  members.  This  was  only  eighteen 
more  than  they  had  elected  fifteen  years  previously.  The  Liberal  Unionists 
were  now  reduced  to  forty-six  representatives,  making  the  whole  ministerial 
strength  only  three  hundred  and  fifteen.  The  Liberals  elected  two  hundred 
and  seventy -four  members,  and  the  Home  Rulers  eighty-one,  making  a  total 
In  this  combination  of  three  hundred  and  fifty-five,  or  a  majority  of  forty 
aeainst  the  orovernment. 

This  signified  the  return  of  the  Liberals  to  power  and  the  final  ascend- 
ency of  Mr.  Gladstone.  It  could  not  be  doubted  that  he  would  soon  again 
be  summoned  to  the  head  of  the  government.  Some  symptoms  of  weak- 
ness, however,  had  to  be  noted.  The  Irish  party  was  rent  in  twain  as  the 
result  of  the  deposition  of  Mr.  Parnell.  By  this  schism  the  cause  of  Home 
Rule  was  greatl}'  weakened.  There  was  a  want  of  unity  among  those  who 
had  been  the  champions  of  that  cause.  Besides,  a  new  party,  known  as  the 
Independent  Labor  party,  with  Mr.  Keir  Hardie — destined  after  three  years 
to  create  by  his  presence  and  speeches  a  sensation  in  labor  circles,  in  America 
— at  its  head,  appeared  in  the  House,  commanding  a  few  determined  votes. 

It  was  on  the  5th  of  August  that  the  new  Parliament  was  opened.  The 
Conservative  ministers  had  not  yet  resigned,  and  appeared  loath  to  do  so. 
When  the  address  from  the  throne  was  delivered,  and  the  usual  motion 
made  for  adopting  it,  a  vote  of  no  confidence  was  sprung  from  the  Liberal 
benches,  and  was  debated  with  much  vigor  for  three  days,  when  the 
House  divided,  and  the  vote  of  no  confidence  was  carried  by  a  majority 
of  forty!  It  was  the  end  of  the  Salisbury  government.  The  ministry 
at  once  resigned,  and  William  E.  Gladstone  was  for  the  fouiHh  time 
called  to  be  prime  minister.  The  business  of  the  session  was  speedily 
brought  to  a  close,  and  Parliament  was  prorogued  until  the  ist  of  Feb- 
ruary, 1893. 

The  disruption  of  the  Irish  party  and  the  weak-heartedness  of  many 
Liberals  led  to  a  vague  belief  that  the  cause  of  Home  Rule  would  be  aban- 
doned, and  that  the  new  Liberal  government  would  take  some  other  tack. 
Not  so,  however,  thought  Mr.  Gladstone.  He  regarded  the  recent  elections 
as  decisive  of  the  course  which  he  should  pursue.     He  spent  the  interval  of 


FIRST    BATTLE    FOR    HOME    RULE. 


607 


the  prorogation  in  considering  and  maturing  the  measure  concerning  which 
he  knew  well  enough  the  last  great  battle  of  his  life  was  to  be  fought. 

After  the  usual  preliminaries  at  the  opening  of  the  session   the   prime 


WILLIAM   E.    GLADSTONE.      FOR  THE    FOURTH   TIME   PRIME   MINISTER. 

minister  brought  forward  his  second  Home  Rule  Bill,  and  presented  it  in 
the  House  on  the  14th  of  February,  1893.  The  scene  was  the  repetition  of 
the  like  event   of  1886.     Mr.  Gladstone  entitled   his  new  measure  "A    Bill 


6o8  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

for  the  Better  Government  of  Ireland."  The  occasion  was  likely  to  be  long 
remembered.  History  could  hardly  omit  this  hour  in  the  life  of  the  states- 
man now  in  his  eighty-fourth  year.  For  years  and  years,  through  evil 
report  and  good,  he  had  struggled  on,  and  had  now  come  to  the  hour  of 
apparent  triumph.  The  hall  of  the  House  of  Commons  was  packed  to  its 
utmost  capacity.  The  galleries  were  occupied,  and  the  corridors,  and 
throngs  were  thrust  back  who  had  no  hope  of  gaining  entrance.  The  Prince 
of  Wales  sat  in  the  peers'  gallery,  with  the  young  Duke  of  York  on  his 
left.     The  peers  were  out  in  full  force.     The  diplomatic  gallery  was  crowded. 

When  Mr.  Gladstone  made  his  appearance  the  Liberal  and  Irish  forces 
sprang  to  their  feet.  There  was  fear  that  the  aged  premier  could  not  be 
heard;  but  his  magnificent  voice  rang  out  as  usual.  His  speech  occupied 
more  than  two  hours;  but  he  showed  no  signs  of  failure.  In  one  respect 
there  was  cause  for  anxiety.  His  eyesight  had  failed.  One  of  his  eyes  was 
almost  useless.  Although  such  a  proceeding  was  out  of  order,  and  indeed 
positively  against  the  rules,  Mr.  Gladstone  had  Mr.  John  Morley  as  his 
assistant  to  read  his  notes,  to  which  he  made  reference  at  intervals.  Neither 
the  speaker  nor  any  member  objected.  It  would  have  required  a  hard  heart 
to  do  that.  ^Ir.  Gladstone  began  by  saying  that  the  bill  of  1886  had  been 
founded  on  five  principles,  and  that  the  new  bill  which  he  w^as  now  to  intro- 
duce would  adhere  to  the  same  principles,  subject  only  to  certain  important 
chanofes  in  detail.  One  of  these  chancres  was  the  retention  of  the  Irish 
members  in  the  imperial   Parliament. 

Again  the  prime  minister  recommended  the  establishment  of  an  Irish 
legislature,  authorized  to  legislate  for  Ireland  in  all  matters  relating  exclu- 
sively to  that  country.  Again  he  pointed  out  those  elements  of  authority 
which  should  be  reserved  for  the  imperial  Parliament.  All  questions  relat- 
ing to  the  crown,  to  the  viceroyalty,  to  war  and  peace,  to  the  natidnal  de- 
fenses, to  treaties,  to  the  coinage,  and  to  general  commerce,  should  be 
reserved  as  matters  for  the  imperial  government.  The  Viceroy  of  Ireland 
should  hold  his  office  for  six  years,  and  should  not  be  dependent  on  the  in- 
coming and  outgoing  of  cabinets.  There  should  be  a  privy  council  in  Ire- 
land, to  assist  the  viceroy,  who  should  have  the  right  to  give  or  withhold 
assent  to  bills  of  the  Irish  Parliament.*  Over  this  the  veto  of  the  sovereign 
should  remain  in  full  force. 

The  Irish  legislature  should  consist  of  two  bodies,  a  council  and  an 
assembly,  and  the  speaker  defined  the  numbers  in  each,  their  qualifications 
and   the  qualifications  of  electors.     The  existing    constabulary  should   be 

*  The  Tories  of  the  period  made  every  effort  to  cast  odium  upon  the  project  for  an  independent  Irish  Parlia- 
ment. As  usual  in  such  cases,  caricature  came  to  the  rescue  of  argument.  The  prints  of  the  day  presented 
many  cartoons  at  the  expense  of  the  hapless  Irish,  whose  alleged  weakness  in  temperate  statesmanship  was  fre- 
quently the  theme  of  witty  pencils.  One  picture  of  unusual  force  and  pith  was  entitled  "  A  Dream  of  an  Irish 
Parliament." 


\ 


FIRST    BATTLE    FOR    HOME    RULE. 


609 


39 


THE    BRITISH    NOTION    OF   AN    IRISH    PARLIAMENT. 


6lO  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

replaced  in  time  by  a  new  police,  to  be  appointed  by  the  legislature.  The 
Irish  members  in  the  imperial  Parliament  should  be  reduced  to  eighty,  and 
should  be  precluded  from  taking  part  in  the  divisions  on  such  bills  or  reso- 
lutions as  affected  only  Great  Britain  or  things  or  persons  therein.  The 
remainder  of  the  bill  differed  not  much  from  the  provisions  of  the  Home 
Rule  bill  of  1886. 

Mr.  Gladstone  concluded  his  address  with  an  eloquent  peroration.  He 
hoped  that  the  controversy  between  the  two  countries  would  here  and  now 
be  ended.  He  could  himself  never  be  a  party  to  the  transmission  to  the 
generations  following  of  the  heritage  of  discord — a  discord  that  had  run 
throuorh  seven  centuries  almost  without  cessation.  Then  he  concluded  with 
these  words  :  "  Sir,  it  would  be  a  misery  to  me  if  I  had  omitted  in  these 
closing  years  any  measures  possible  for  me  to  take  toward  upholding  and 
promoting  what  I  believe  to  be  the  cause,  not  of  one  party  nor  of  another, 
not  of  one  nation  nor  another,  but  of  all  parties  and  all  nations  inhabiting 
these  islands.  .  .  .  Let  me  entreat  you — if  it  were  with  my  latest  breath  I  would 
entreat  you — to  let  the  dead  bury  its  dead.  Cast  behind  you  every  recol- 
lection of  bygone  evils ;  cherish,  love,  and  sustain  one  another  through  all 
the  vicissitudes  of  human  affairs  in  the  times  that  are  to  come." 

The  bill  was  allowed  to  pass  the  first  reading  without  a  division  of  the 
House.  Then  followed  four  nights  of  debate,  when  the  bill  was  formally 
presented,  with  great  enthusiasm.  Twelve  nights  more  were  consumed 
before  the  debates  were  ended,  and  the  bill  went  to  its  second  reading  and 
ivas  carried  by  a  majority  of  forty-three  votes.  Then  the  measure  went  into 
committee  and  was  there  detained  for  a  considerable  period,  the  opponents 
of  the  bill  resorting  to  every  expedient  to  prevent  its  passage.  Finally  the 
closure  was  ordered,  and  the  "  Bill  for  the  Better  Government  of  Ireland" 
was  passed.  This  was  on  the  1st  of  September,  1893.  The  final  majority 
for  the  government  was  thirty-four,  which,  though  it  indicated  a  slight 
weakening  here  and  there,  was  sufficiently  emphatic  ;  but  the  question  was 
now.  Would  the  House  of  Lords  ratify  the  decision  of  the  Commons?  and 
that  question  remained  to  be  answered  in  the  negative.  The  House  Bill 
was  at  once  taken  up  by  the  Lords,  and  after  a  debate  which  extended  over 
three  nights  was  rejected  by  the  tremendous  majority  of  three  hundred  and 
seventy-eight,  only  forty-one  votes  being  cast  in  favor  of  the  bill.  The 
decision  was  reached  on  the  8th  of  September,  1893;  the  great  work  of 
William  E.  Gladstone's  latest  hope  was  suddenly  swung  into  the  air. 

The  effect  of  this  action  of  the  Lords  on  the  Liberal  party,  and  on  Mr. 
Gladstone  in  particular,  may  well  be  imagined.  It  was  the  reversal  of  victory 
won.  It  was  the  undoing  of  the  supreme  labor  of  a  great  life.  It  was 
counting  of  no  effect  the  voice  of  the  British  nation.  It  was,  perhaps,  of 
itself  the  strongest  argument  ever  adduced  for  the  total  abolition  of  the 


FIRST    BATTLE    FOR    HOME    RULE. 


6ll 


House  of  Lords,  with  the  consequent  remanding  of  the  whole  government 
of  Great  Britain  to  the  hands  of  the  people  and  their  representatives. 

Mr.  Gladstone  continued  for  a  short  time  at  the  head  of  the  govern- 
ment. On  the  2ist  of  September  the  House  adjourned  for  a  recess,  nothing 
having  resulted  from  its  labor.  The  prime  minister  was  hopeful  that  some- 
thing might  yet  be  accomplished,  and  when  the   House  reconvened  on  the 


ARCHIBALD    PHILIP    PRIMROSE,    EARL    OF    ROSEBERY. 


2d  of  November  he  brought  in  the  Encrlish  Local  Government  Bill  and  the 
Employers'  Liability  Bill.  Both  of  these  measures  were  adopted  by  the 
House  of  Commons  during  the  winter  session  ;  but  the  first  was  weighted 
down  with  amendments  by  the  Lords  and  the  latter  so  mutilated  that  it  was 
cast  aside  without  further  action. 

So  the  session  dragged  along,  with  little  valuable  work,  until  the  ist  of 
March,  1894.     By  this  time  Mr.  Gladstone's  health  (he  had  now  passed  his 


6l2  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OK    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

eighty-fifth  birthday)  was  considerably  impaired;  the  strain  of  the  hist 
session  had  been  too  great,  even  for  his  iron  constitution.  His  eyesight  in 
particular  had  failed  to  a  remarkable  degree,  and  it  became  imperative  for 
him  to  retire  from  public  responsibility,  and,  indeed,  from  public  life.  His 
decision  in  this  regard  was  made  on  the  ist  of  March  in  the  year  just 
named,  and  two  da)s  afterward  he  and  Mrs.  Gladstone  drove  down  to 
Osborne,  where  for  \\\^  fourtJi  and  last  time  he  delivered  to  her  majesty  his 
seals  of  office  as  Prime  Minister  of  Great  Britain. 

The  queen  for  her  part — according  to  common  report — again  offered 
to  raise  Mr.  Gladstone  to  the  peerage,  wMth  the  title  of  earl ;  but  he  declined 
to  be  thus  honored.  He  contented  himself  with  recommending  to  her 
majesty  that  she  send  for  Sir  Archibald  Philip  Primrose,  Fifth  Earl  of 
Rosebery,  and  commission  him  as  prime  minister.  This  w^as  accordingly 
done,  and  the  Liberal  government  was  reorganized  with  Lord  Rosebery  at 
its  head. 

Nor  may  we  pass  from  this  dramatic  conclusion  of  a  great  public  life 
without  noticinof  Mr.  Gladstone's  last  utterance  in  the  House  of  Commons. 
It  w^as  on  the  day  when  his  own  retirement  w^as  first  formally  announced. 
On  that  subject,  however,  Mr.  Gladstone  said  nothing.  A  measure  called 
the  Parish  Councils  Bill  was  before  the  House,  with  an  amendment  which 
had  come  down  from  the  House  of  Lords.  Mr.  Gladstone  spoke  briefly 
against  the  amendment,  and  in  defense  of  the  rights  of  the  representatives 
of  the  people  against  the  encroachments  and  obstructions  which  came  from 
the  hereditary'  chamber.  He  warned  the  House  of  Lords  that  their  course 
with  respect  to  the  House  of  Commons,  and  the  legislation  proceeding 
therefrom,  had  reached  such  a  point  as  to  create  an  issue  on  which  the 
people  of  Great  Britain  miLst  soon  he  called  to  sit  in  judgment  I  With  this 
warning  flung  at  hereditary  privilege  William  E.  Gladstone,  the  great 
Liberal  leader,  wdiose  voice  had  been  heard  for  so  many  years  in  the  people's 
cause,  in  the  advocacy  of  every  progressive  measure,  and  in  the  promotion 
of  every  movement  in  British  society  that  looked  to  the  enlargement  of 
human  rights  and  the  confirmation  of  civil  liberty,  retired  from  the  scene  of 
his  triumphs  to  lift  his  voice  in  those  halls  no  more  forever. 


RETIREMENT    AM)    LAST    YEARS. 


613 


CHAPTER  XXVn. 
Retirement  and  Last  Years. 


FTER  Mr.  Gladstone's  retirement  from  the  House  of  Commons 
Lord  Hartington  became  the  Liberal  leader.  As  we  have 
intimated,  Mr.  Gladstone  took  no  formal  leave  of  the  body  in 
which  he  had  for  so  long  been  the  leading  actor.  In  this  there 
is  a  striking  similarity  between  his  conduct  and  that  of  his 
rival,  the  Earl  of  Beaconsfield.  Neither,  on  his  going,  delivered  a  farewell 
address  to  the  House  of  Commons.  Each  made  his  last  speech  as  prime 
minister  in  that  body  in  the  usual  manner  and  walked  away  without  a  word 
of  farewell.  In  neither  case  was  it  known  at  the  moment  that  the  scene 
was  over,  that  the  curtain  had  fallen  to  rise  no  more. 

It  was  remembered  that  the  Earl  of  Beaconsfield's  conduct  on  the 
occasion  of  his  going  forth  had  been  significant.  The  last  thought  and 
almost  the  last  word  of  his  last  speech  was  "  Empire."  Taking  his  seat,  he 
remained  for  a  brief  time  with  folded  arms,  his  head  bent  forward.  The 
bell  struck  midnight.  He  then  arose  and  passed  the  full  length  of  the 
floor,  turning  and  bowing  to  the  speaker.  At  the  bar  he  paused  for  a 
moment  and  surveyed  the  House  ;  then  passed  on  to  return  no  more.  Mr. 
Gladstone,  as  we  have  seen,  uttered  for  his  last  words  a  challenge  to  the 
House  of  Lords,  telling  that  body  that  there  was  an  appeal  to  something 
stronger  and  greater  than  themselves;  that  is,  the  British  nation.  Mr. 
Balfour,  leader  of  the  opposition,  said  in  answer  that  "behind  the  dignified 
language  of  the  speech  there  lurked  nothing  less  than  a  declaration  of  war 
against  the  ancient  Constitution  of  these  realms."  Mr.  Gladstone  made  no 
answer.  He  sat  holding  his  ministerial  box  on  his  knees.  He  talked  for  a 
few  minutes  with  his  colleagues,  who  were  in  the  secret  that  the  hour  had 
come  when  they  should  see  him  there  no  more.  Then  he  arose  and  with 
quick  steps,  in  his  usual  manner  and  by  the  usual  passage,  went  behind  the 
speaker's  chair  and  disappeared. 

The  veteran  ex-prime  minister  repaired  to  his  home  at  Hawarden.  No 
man  in  his  eighty-fifth  year  can  be  regarded  as  strong  or  as  having  the  prom- 
ise of  long  life  before  him.  If  it  had  not  been  for  the  failure  of  Mr.  Glad- 
stone's eyesight  he  might  yet  have  remained  in  the  House  of  Commons  for 
a  season.  He  was,  however,  getting  almost  blind.  One  of  his  eyes  was  seri- 
ously affected  with  incipient  cataract,  and  the  other  was  affected  by  sympa- 
thy„  It  became  necessary  to  have  surgical  treatment,  and  this  was  success- 
fully given  a  short  time  after  the  statesman's  retirement.  He  bore  the 
surgery  with  great  fortitude,  and  his  sturdy  constitution  brought  him  safely 
through.      His  eyesight  began  to  improve  from  the  operation   and  from  the 


6 14 


LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 


rest  which  he  now  enjoyed ;  and  he  was  soon  able  to  resume  his  reading  and 
correspondence.  His  general  health  improved,  and  he  began  to  be  seen 
abroad  about  his  estates  as  usual.  His  step,  however,  had  now  become 
deliberate  and  his  shoulders  were  bent  somewhat  with  the  accumulation  of 
years.  The  happy  surroundings  at  Hawarden  favored  the  restoration  of 
the  Grand  Old  Man  to  as  full  a  measure  of  strength  as  one  of  his  great  age 
might  hope  to  enjoy. 

Mr.  Gladstone  had  during  his  long  public  career  several  haunts  which 
were  favorite  places  with  him.     While  on  parliamentary  duty  his  residence 


MRS.  (.;laijstoxe. 
(From  a  late  photograph.) 

was  generally  at  "  lo  Downing  Street."  Sometimes  he  lived  at  Carlton 
House  Terrace  ;  sometimes  at  the  Lion  Mansions,  at  Brighton  ;  sometimes 
at  Mr.  Armistead's  home  in  the  North,  and  in  vacations  frequently  at  Biar- 
ritz, in  Brittany.  But  of  all  the  places  none  was  as  his  home  at  Hawarden. 
That  was  his  Mecca.  It  is  not  without  note  of  memory  and  praise  that  the 
universal  tradition  respecting  the  happiness  of  Mr.  Gladstone's  home  life  is 
no  more  than  a  record  of  indubitable  fact. 


RETIREMENT    AND    LAST    YEARS.  615 

The  biographers  of  great  men  are  in  the  habit  of  glorifying  them  at  all 
hazards,  particularly  as  it  relates  to  their  domestic  bliss.  This  has  been 
done  in  several  notable  cases  with  the  great  men  of  America,  when  as  a 
matter  of  fact  exactly  the  opposite  was  true.  In  Mr.  Gladstone's  case  the 
home  life  was  as  happy  as  the  public  life  was  famous.  Mrs.  Gladstone  has 
been  through  a  long  life  his  comfort  and  support.  She  is  known  the  world 
over  as  a  woman  of  extraordinary  virtue,  good  taste,  charitable  dispositions, 
social  accomplishments,  and  religious  character.  She  has  kept  ever  by  Mr. 
Gladstone's  side,  watching  over  him  as  a  guardian  angel,  and  ministering  to 
his  wants  and  tastes  with  a  constancy  worthy  of  the  highest  praise. 

All  the  members  of  the  family  have  in  like  manner  held  honorable  and 
affectionate  relation  to  the  father.  The  eldest  daughter  is  Mrs.  Wickham, 
and  the  second,  Mrs.  Drew,  wife  of  the  Rev.  Harry  Drew,  whose  duties  have 
been  at  the  church  of  Hawarden.  The  third  is  Helen  Gladstone,  un- 
married. The  Drews  have  remained  residents  of  the  castle,  and  the  chil- 
dren of  Mrs.  Drew  are  especially  dear  to  their  grandfather.  The  little 
granddaughter,  Dorothy  Mary  Drew,  or,  as  she  is  called  in  her  own  lisp- 
ing, "  Dorsy  "  Drew,  has  been  the  favorite  of  the  old  veteran,  and  nearly 
always  his  companion  and  playmate  in  the  late  years  of  his  life.  With  her, 
of  course,  the  Grand  Old  Man  became  again  a  boy  and  a  poet.  To  her  he 
addressed  the  following  poem,  which  has  been  regarded  as  one  of  the  best 
examples  of  his  art  in  verse  : 

"AD  DOROTHEAM. 

"  I  know  where  there  is  honey  in  a  jar. 
Meet  for  a  certain  little  friend  of  mine, 
And,  Dorothy,  I  know  where  daisies  are 
That  only  wait  small  hands  to  intertwine 
A  wreath  for  such  a  golden  head  as  thine. 

**The  thought  that  thou  art  coming  makes  all  glad. 
The  house  is  bright  with  blossoms  high  and  low, 
And  many  a  little  lass  and  little  lad 
Expectantly  are  running  to  and  fro. 
The  fire  within  our  hearts  is  all  aglow. 

"We  want  thee,  child,  to  share  in  our  delight 

On  this  high  day,  the  holiest  and  best,  ' 

Because  'twas  then,  ere  youth  had  taken  flight, 
Thy  grandmamma,  of  women  loveliest, 
Made  me  of  men  most  honored  and  most  blest. 

"  That  naughty  boy  who  led  thee  to  suppose 
He  was  thy  sweetheart  has,  I  grieve  to  tell, 
Been  seen  to  pick  the  garden's  choicest  rose 
And  toddle  with  it  to  another  belle. 
Who  does  not  treat  him  altogether  well. 


6l6  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

"But  mind  not  that,  or  let  it  teacli  thee  this — 
To  waste  no  love  on  any  youthful  rover. 
All  youths  are  rovers,  I  assure  thee,  miss. 
No,  if  thou  wouldst  true  constancy  discover. 
Thy  grandpa{)a  is  i)erfect  as  a  lover. 

"So,  come,  thou  playmate  of  my  closing  day, 

The  latest  treasure  life  can  offer  me, 

And  with  thy  baby  laughter  make  us  gay. 

Thy  fresh  young  voice  shall  sing,  my  Dorothy, 
Songs  that  shall  bid  the  feet  of  sorrow  flee." 

Once  safely  in  the  haven  of  his  old  age  Mr.  Gladstone  by  no  means 
forgot  the  world  he  had  left  behind.  His  mind,  however,  was  more  occu- 
pied with  the  affairs  of  humanity  in  general  than  with  the  political  affairs 
of  Great  Britain.  Occasionally  he  continued  to  give  utterance  to  his  opin- 
ions and  hopes  on  great  questions  affecting  the  welfare  of  mankind.  For 
example,  when  the  Armenian  outrages  began  to  distress  the  world  in  the 
early  part  of  1895,  Mr.  Gladstone  becanie  deeply  interested  in  the  subject, 
and  used  his  influence  in  accordance  with  his  lifelong  policy  in  favor  of  the 
oppressed.  In  the  latter  part  of  July,  in  the  year  just  mentioned,  he  was 
induced  by  the  Duke  of  Westminster  and  the  general  voice  to  make  an 
address  on  the  Armenian  atrocities.  On  the  25th  of  the  month  the  aged 
statesman  and  his  wife  had  celebrated  the  fifty-sixth  anniversary  of  their  mar- 
riage. There  had  been  a  family  gathering  at  Hawarden,  which  was  not  yet 
dissolved,  when  the  Town  Hall  of  Chester  was  procured,  and  Mr.  Gladstone 
was  announced  to  speak. 

A  throng  gathered  which  the  hall  could  by  no  means  accommodate. 
The  Duke  of  Westminster  presided.  Many  distinguished  men  sat  on 
the  platform.  The  members  of  the  family,  including  the  Hon.  Herbert 
Gladstone,  M.P.,  and  the  Rev,  Stephen  Gladstone,  were  present.  The  vet- 
eran orator  came  to  his  task  in  full  spirit  and  spoke  for  more  than  an  hour. 
Mrs.  Gladstone  sat  immediately  in  front,  watching  her  boy-husband,  to  see 
that  his  oration  was  au  fait.  The  human  heart  loses  not  its  buoyancy  of 
hope  even  to  the  last  day  ! 

"  Such  things  may  show 
How  far  into  the  arctic  region  of  our  lives 
The  Gulf  Stream  of  our  youth  may  flow." 

Mr.  Gladstone's  speech  was  up  to  his  usual  standard  of  excellence.  It  was 
described  by  the  London  Times  as  "an  effort  -unparalleled,  even  as  a  mere 
physical  achievement,  by  a  man  advanced  in  his  eighty-sixth  year." 

In  the  course  of  his  speech  the  orator  said  :  "  In  ordinary  circumstances 
when  we  have  before  us  cases  of  robbery,  of  crime,  perhaps  of  very  horrible 


RETIREMENT    AND    LAST    YEARS. 


617 


WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE   AND    HIS    GRANDDAUGHTER,    DOROTHY    DREW. 


6l8  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 

crime — for  example,  the  sad  case  mentioned  in  the  papers  to-day  of  the 
massacre  of  persons  in  a  part  of  China — we  at  once  assume,  '  O,  yes,  in  all 
countries,  unfortunately,  there  are  malefactors,  there  are  plunderers,  there 
are  murderers  ;  and  these  are  the  people  whose  deeds  we  are  going  to  con- 
sider.' It  is  not  so  here.  Here  you  will  find  nothing  of  that  kind.  We 
have  nothing  to  do  with  what  are  called  the  dangerous  classes  of  the  com- 
munity. It  is  not  their  proceedings  which  you  are  asked  to  consider.  It  is 
the  proceedings  of  the  government  at  Constantinople  and  of  its  agents. 
There  is  not  one  of  those  misdeeds  for  which  the  government  at  Constan- 
tinople is  not  morally  responsible." 

It  was  just  before  the  event  last  referred  to  that  Mr.  Gladstone  sent 
his  final  communication  to  the  House  of  Commons.  This  was  done  under 
date  of  July  5,  1895.  The  Irish  cause  had  continued  to  obtrude  itself  ever 
and  anon  upon  the  attention  of  the  government.  The  short-lived  ministry 
of  Lord  Rosebery  had  in  the  meantime  been  overthrown,  and  the  Marquis 
of  Salisbury  had  enabled  the  Conservatives  to  reestablish  themselves  in 
power;  but,  like  the  ghost  of  Banquo,  the  Irish  specter  would  not  down. 
Mr.  Gladstone's  letter  had  the  double  purpose  of  promoting  the  cause  of 
Home  Rule  and  of  indicating  his  fixed  dislike  of  the  influence  of  the  House 
of  Lords  in  thwarting  the  purposes  of  the  nation.  The  letter  was  as 
follows  : 

Hawarden  Castle,  Chester,  July  5,   1895. 

"Above  all  other  present  purposes  vindicate  the  rights  of  the  House  of 
Commons  as  the  organ  of  the  nation,  and  reestablish  the  honor  of  England, 
as  well  as  consolidate  the  strength  of  the  empire,  by  conceding  the  just  and 
constitutional  claims  of  Ireland.  W.  E.  Gladstone." 

This  is  the  letter  the  facsimile  of  which  we  have  set  in  the  place  of  a 
dedication  to  this  volume.  It  was  written  just  after  Mr.  Gladstone's  return 
from  a  summer  voyage  to  the  north  of  Europe.  An  event  of  European  im- 
portance had  occurred  there  in  June  of  1895,  attracting  Mr.  Gladstone's 
attention  and  inducing  him  to  make  a  voyage  to  Denmark  and  the  German 
coast. 

The  event  referred  to  was  the  completion  and  dedication  of  a  great 
ship  canal  extending  from  Kiel  to  Brunsbuttel.  The  channel  thus  opened 
for  commerce  extended  from  the  Baltic  to  the  North  Sea.  Hitherto,  the 
only  means  of  transit  by  water  between  the  North  Sea  and  the  Baltic  had 
been  far  around  the  peninsula  of  Jutland,  by  way  of  the  Cattegat  and  the 
Skager  Rack.  The  old  Eider  canal  had  given  passage  to  small  ships  only. 
Such  were  the  difficulty  and  the  danger  of  the  all-water  way  around,  that  an 
annual  loss  of  two  hundred  vessels  was  entailed  on  the  commerce  of  the 
world.     The  new  canal  was  safe  and  direct  and  capacious. 


RETIREMENT    AND    LAST    YEARS. 


619 


The  occasion  of  the  opening  was  honored  with  an  international 
pageant  of  magnificent  character.  The  formal  dedication  was  on  the  20th 
of  June.  The  Kaiser  Wilhelm  II  was  present  and  presided  at  the  principal 
ceremony.  Distinguished  visitors  and  representatives  gathered  from  nearly 
all  the  leading  nations.  Mr.  Gladstone,  with  his  family  and  a  company  of 
friends,  took  ship  from  Southampton  to  Kiel  as  an  observer  and  honored 
guest.      His  coming  and  reception  were  heralded  as  a  matter  worthy  of  his- 


torical note. 


Nor  might  it  be  observed  that   his  influence  and  fame  were 


GLADS  i(n\K    AND    GROUP    OF   FRIENDS. 


lessened  by  the  fact  that  he  was  no  longer  responsible  for  the  conduct  of 
the  British  government.  The  leading  men  of  Europe  gathered  round  him, 
and  it  was  conceded  that  his  presence  at  the  opening  of  the  canal  greatly 
heightened  the  event  in  the  estimation  of  not  only  the  Germans  and  the 
Danes,  but  also  of  the  representatives  of  other  nations. 

During  the  years  1895-96  Mr.  Gladstone  in  his  retirement  inveterately 
agitated  the  question  of  British  interference  in  behalf  of  the  Armenians 
His  constitutional  and  acquired  dislike  of  the  Ottoman  empire,  and  in  par- 
ticular of  the  policy  of  the  sultan  and  his  subordinates  in  Armenia,  increased 
the  acerbity  of  his  attacks  on  the  conduct  of  the  government.  He  wrote 
letters  and  published  articles  in  which  the  national  animosity  toward  the 
Turk  was  fanned  to  a  white  heat.  His  assaults  and  those  of  other  liberal 
leaders  on  the  mild-mannered  policy  of  Lord  Rosebery  told  so  strongly  on 


620  LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E,    GLADSTONEo 

that  Statesman  that  he  determined  to  resign  from  the  head  of  the  govern- 
ment. This  he  did  on  October  7,  1895,  assigning  as  a  reason  that  he  could 
not  accept  the  course  suggested  by  Gladstone,  and  that  he  must  therefore 
"resume  his  liberty  of  personal  action  "  in  the  House.  To  this  he  added 
that  the  acceptance  of  the  Gladstonian  policy  would,  in  all  probability, 
plunge  England  into  war,  and  would  almost  certainly  bring  down  a  whole- 
sale destruction  on  the  Armenians.  It  was  one  of  the  spectacles  of  the  year 
that  an  infirm  old  man,  nearly  eighty-six  years  of  age,  half  blind  and  living 
in  retirement  away  from  the  central  scene  of  parliamentary  agitation,  should 
be  able  to  compel  the  resignation  of  the  British  ministry  ! 

The  agitation  of  the  Armenian  question,  led  by  Mr.  Gladstone,  extended 
into  literature.  Conservatism  and  liberalism  appeared  in  poetry.  A  series 
of  powerful  sonnets,  entitled  TJie  Purple  East,  by  William  Watson,  pub- 
lished at  this  juncture,  were  read  and  applauded  wherever  the  English 
language  is  spoken.  One  of  these  sonnets,  entitled  "  Abdul  the  Damned," 
gave  to  the  sultan  a  new  name,  which  could  hardly  be  regarded  as  Chris- 
tian. On  the  other  side  a  weaker  champion  arose  in  a  feeble  attempt  to 
uphold  the  conservative  policy  of  the  empire  as  represented  by  the  incom- 
ing Salisbury  government.  This  was  Alfred  Austin,  who,  on  New  Year's 
Day,  1896,  was  appointed  to  the  office  of  Poet  Laureate.  That  post  had 
been  vacant  since  the  death  of  Lord  Tennyson  in  1892.  The  appointment 
of  Austin,  wdiose  rank  as  a  poet  was  not  above  the  level  of  formal  respecta- 
bility, was  a  part  of  the  odium  which  Lord  Salisbury  took  upon  himself  just 
after  assuming  office. 

Mr.  Gladstone  signalized  the  beginning  of  the  year  1896  by  the  con- 
tribution of  a  series  of  articles  under  the  title  of  "The  Future  Life  and  the 
Condition  of  Man  Therein,"  to  the  North  American  Review.  In  these  he 
showed  at  once  the  unabated  force  of  his  intellect  and  the  strong  ground- 
work of  his  old-time  conservative  education.  It  is  remarkable  that  while 
Gladstone  as  a  statesman  advanced  from  Conservatism  to  Liberalism,  and 
that  while  as  a  philosopher  on  ecclesiastical  policies  he  made  much  progress 
and  accomplished  much  in  the  way  of  freeing  his  country  from  Church 
thraldom,  in  his  fundamental  religious  concepts  and  doctrine  he  progressed 
not  at  all. 

This  fact  was  strongly  revealed  in  his  series  of  articles  on  "  The  Future 
Life."  He  took  as  the  basis  of  the  discussion  Bishop  Butler's  Analogy  of 
Natural  and  Revealed  Religion,  a  work  which  In  the  early  part  of  the  cen- 
tury exercised  a  powerful  influence  on  religious  thought,  but  which  no 
longer  satisfied  the  conditions  of  philosophical  Inquiry. 

As  an  example  of  Gladstone's  analysis  and  method  we  may  note  the 
six  following  distinctions  which  he  draws  as  necessary  to  the  discussion  of 
the  question  of  Immortality  : 


RETIREMENT    AND    LAST    YEARS,  62 1 

"  I.  A  vitality  surmountin<^  the  particular  crisis  of  death  is  one  thing; 
an  existence  without  end  is  another. 

"  2.  We  may  speak  of  an  immortality  of  the  disembodied  spirit,  and 
may  combine  it  with  or  disjoin  it  from  a  survival  or  resurrection  of  the 
body.  In  the  second  case  it  is  of  the  entire  man  ;  in  the  first  it  is  of  part 
only  of  man,  although  of  the  chief  part. 

"  ^.  The  new  life  to  which  death  is  to  introduce  the  human  beincr  mav 
be  active,  intelligent,  moral,  spiritual,  and  may  be  placed  in  an  environment 
accordant  with  all  these;  or  it  may  be  divested  of  any  of  these  character- 
istics or  of  them  all. 

"  4.  The  life  of  the  unseen  world  may  be  conceived  as  projected  into 
the  future,  as  it  is  presented  to  us  by  divine  revelation,  or  it  may  be  pro- 
jected also  into  the  past,  and  viewed  there  in  association  with  a  past 
eternity. 

"5.  It  was  when  Butler  saw  personal  identit)-,  as  he  thought,  in  danger 
that  he  undertook  to  deal  with  the  question  of  our  existence  in  the  unseen 
world.  This  identity  is  in  truth  the  very  core  of  the  whole  subject.  An 
immortality  without  identity  is  of  no  concern  to  us,  and  the  transfiguration 
of  souls  is  a  virtual  denial  of  the  doctrine. 

"6.  We  have  to  distinoruish  between  a  condition  of  deathlessness  into 
which  we  grow  by  degrees,  and  an  immortality  which,  ingrained  (so  to 
speak)  from  birth,  is  already  our  absolute  possession.  This  distinction  is  a 
vital  one  for  those  who  do  not  accept  any  dogma  of  immortality  belonging  to 
nature,  but  who  look  upon  it  as  a  gift  resulting  from  union  with  Christ  and 
witli  C'lod." 

It  was  in  literary  work  such  as  this,  and  such  as  his  strength  and 
impaired  vision  would  permit,  that  Mr.  Gladstone  spent  the  remainder  of 
1896  and  the  early  part  of  the  following  year.  In  this  period  he  arranged 
his  papers,  perfected  his  published  works,  and  prepared  the  documents  for 
his  biography.  It  were  hardly  a  metaphor  to  say  that  all  the  world  looked 
on  with  interest  as  this  c{reat  life  in  the  hours  of  sunset  busied  itself  with 
preparation  for  the  last  long  flight.  When  the  completed  product  of  this 
strong  and  efficient  intellect  shall  be  (jiven  to  mankind  in  its  final  form  as 
it  came  from  his  hands,  it  will  be  worthy  of  a  place  in  the  immortal  collec- 
tion where  are  set  the  works  of  the  leading  statesmen,  publicists,  thinkers, 
philanthropists  of  the  human  race. 

In  March  of  1897  Mr.  Gladstone  was  aroused  to  unusual  indignation 
on  account  of  the  aggression  of  the  Ottoman  empire  on  the  patriot  Greeks, 
and  on  the  score  of  the  merciless  war  which  the  Turks  made  oa  the  weaker 
party.  True,  as  the  event  showed,  the  Greeks  in  that  war  presented  a  sorry 
figure;  but  the  righteousness  of  their  cause  nevertheless  appealed  power- 
fully to  the  veteran  statesman,  and  he  issued,  at  the  time  stated,  an  address 


622 


LIFE    AND    TIMES    OF    WILLIAM    E.    GLADSTONE. 


on  the  Eastern  crisis,  in  which  he  denounced  in  quite  unmeasured  terms 
the  so-called  "concert  of  Europe"  in  supporting  the  Ottoman  empire  as 
against  the  Greek,  whom  he  characterized  as  "  the  modern  David  among 
the  nations  who  has  dared  to  defy  six  Goliaths."  The  address  was  a  fierce 
philippic  directed  in  chief  against  the  policy  of  the  German  empire  and 
against  the  weakness  of  the  British  empire  in  being  dragged  subserviently 
in  the  wake  of  the  Kaiser  Wilhelm  II. 

As  the  fall  of  1897  verged   to   winter   Mr.   Gladstone  w^as   in   his  usual 
health  with  the  exception  of  the  increasing  severity  of  the   facial  neuralgia 


THE    LAST    PICTURE    TAKEN    OF    MR.     ANU    MRS.    GLADSTONE. 


with  which  he  had  been  afflicted  for  the  past  eighteen  months.  His  physi- 
cian found  that  all  of  his  vital  organs  were  in  healthy  condition,  nor  might 
it  be  easily  discovered  to  what  circumstances  the  facial  neuralgia  was  due. 
Acting  under  advice,  Mr.  Gladstone,  with  Mrs.  Gladstone  and  other  atten- 
dants, went  to  Cannes,  in  southern  France,  and  thence  to  the  Riviera  to 
take  advantage  of  the  mild  air  during  the  winter  months.  His  stay  on 
the  Mediterranean,  however,  produced  no  good  results,  and  in  midwinter 
the  aged  sufferer  returned  to  London.  He  went  thence  to  Bournemouth, 
but  could  find  little  relief,  and  the  news  went  abroad  that  he  was  in  a 
dying  condition.     At  Bournemouth  he  remained  for  a  month,  and  was  then 


RETIREMENT    AND    LAST    YEARS.  623 

taken  to  his  beloved  Hawarden,  where  he  arrived  on  February  19,  1898. 
From  that  haunt  of  peace  he  never  expected  to  go  forth  again. 

Meanwhile  it  was  discovered  by  the  physicians  that  the  source  of  his 
suffering  was  a  necrosis  of  the  nasal  bones.  Nor  was  the  belief  wanting 
that  the  disease  was  of  a  cancerous  character.  Nevertheless,  Mr.  Glad- 
stone's improvement  was  manifest  after  his  return  to  Hawarden.  As  late 
as  the  9th  of  April  he  was  able  to  walk  about  the  grounds,  but  he  had  to 
be  supported  by  an  attendant.  The  pain  in  his  face  subsided  in  a  measure ; 
but  he  was  not  able  to  write  further,  and  his  biography,  on  which  he  had 
been  long  engaged,  was  remanded  to  other  hands. 

In  the  after  part  of  April  the  intelligence  was  given  forth  that  Mr.  Glad- 
stone had  come  to  the  last  scene.  This,  however,  proved  to  be  a  premature 
report.  Nevertheless  the  disease  with  which  he  was  afflicted  had  now  set  a 
fatal  limitation  to  his  career.  The  heroic  patient  suffered  greatly.  At  in- 
tervals he  suggested  the  performance  of  an  operation,  but  the  surgeons 
decided  otherwise.  At  last,  his  vital  organs  began  to  fail.  The  strong  heart 
that  had  beaten  the  march  of  life  for  more  than  eighty-eight  years  began  to 
perform  its  work  in  an  irregular  and  spasmodic  manner.  The  month  of  May 
found  him  still  alive,  but  steadily  going  down  the  shadowy  way  into  the 
obscurity  of  the  oncoming  night. 

Mr.  Gladstone  faced  the  ordeal  without  fear  and  without  hesitation. 
On  the  17th  of  May  his  physicians.  Dr.  Dobie  and  Sir  Thomas  Smith, 
notified  the  family  and  friends  that  the  last  hour  was  near  at  hand.  The 
dying  man's  mind  remained  comparatively  clear  to  the  close.  On  the  i8th 
he  took  leave  of  all  his  servants  and  attendants.  He  eave  to  his  erand- 
daughter,  Dorothy  Drew,  an  affectionate  farewell.  He  gave  up  Mrs.  Glad- 
stone and  his  children. 

Meanwhile  correspondents  representing  the  newspaper  press  of  nearly 
the  whole  world  had  gathered  at  the  little  railway  station  a  short  distance 
from  Hawarden  Castle.  During  the  night  Mr.  Gladstone  sank  into  uncon- 
sciousness. He  continued  to  breathe  until  five  o'clock  on  the  morningf  of 
the  19th  of  May,  when  life  departed,  and  the  soul  of  the  great  British  states- 
man went  to  its  place  in  the  eternities. 

At  the  date  of  his  death  William  Ewart  Gladstone's  age  was  eighty- 
eight  years  four  months  and  twenty  days. 

We  are  thus  able  to  contemplate  one  of  the  few  finished  and  well- 
rounded  lives.  Gladstone  had,  as  all  men  have,  imperfections  anei  weak- 
nesses, but  he  also  had,  in  a  measure,  surpassing  the  measure  of  men,  his 
perfections  and  his  strengths.  His  years  were  more  than  threescore  years 
and  ten  ;  aye,  they  were  well-nigh  fourscore  years  and  ten,  and  yet  their 
strength  was  not,  as  the  preacher  saith,  weakness  and  sorrow. 

Out  of  the  final  wreck  of  this   orreat  manhood  a  new   and   immortal 


624  LIFE    AND    TIMES    ( U'    WILLIAM     E.    GLADSTONE. 

manhood  springs  up  and  survives.  Yet  we  contemplate  him  for  a  moment 
as  he  was  in  the  serenity  of  Ills  old  age.  We  dwell  with  deHght  upon  the 
example  which  the  veteran  gave  to  all  mankind,  even  in  the  years  of  his 
twilight  and  setting.  An  heroic  old  man,  he  kept  himself  in  hand  to  the  last 
hour.  His  physical  imperfections  did  not  appall  him.  In  his  last  earthly 
retreat  we  still  hear  him  speak  at  intervals.  We  follow  each  day  and  note 
each  vicissitude.  We  mark  with  inexpressible  sympathy  his  threatened 
blindness,  and  rejoice  at  the  result  of  the  skillful  surgery  that  gives  him  back 
his  sight.  We  note  with  admiration  the  challenges  which  he  sends  forth  at 
intervals  to  his  countrymen.  We  hear  him  speaking  for  the  Armenians.  W^e 
applaud  his  denunciations  of  the  Turk.  We  note  with  pleasure  the  philan- 
thropic expressions  of  the  old  hero  in  behalf  of  the  downtrodden  among  all 
nations.  We  admire  the  vigor  of  his  extreme  old  age.  We  surround  the 
woodchopper,  a  group  of  boys  and  young  men  gathered  from  all  nations,  and 
shout  as  the  bareheaded  veteran  swings  his  ax.  We  read  and  republish 
his  exquisite  bit  of  little  song  addressed  to  his  granddaughter,  Dorothy 
Drew.  We  join  a  little  space  in  the  play  with  her  kittens  and  spitz  on  the 
big  rug,  in  the  halls  of  Hawarden  Castle.  W^e  mark  the  tottering  step,  the 
slow  incoming  of  decrepitude,  the  deepening  wrinkles  on  the  furrowed  face, 
the  blossom  of  the  almond  tree,  the  obscuration  of  the  light,  the  settling  of 
the  darkness,  the  incoming  of  the  final  night,  not  unrelieved,  however,  by 
the  benignant  star  of  hope  hanging  luminous  in  the  western  sky. 

Death  has  taken  the  Grand  Old  Man  out  of  the  world.  The  drama 
is  concluded.  The  last  act  is  done.  There  is  a  funeral  across  the  sea ;  the 
nations  are  the  mourners.  Humanity  has  lost  a  friend,  and  the  nations 
have  lost  a  leader.  William  E.  Gladstone,  by  the  victorious  battle  of  a  long 
life  ;  has  earned  a  serene  repose  for  his  exhausted  body  in  the  silent  house  to 
w^hich  they  have  borne  him,  and  for  his  spirit  some  elevated  sphere  out  of 
which  he  may  look  well  pleased  on  the  results  of  his  labors.  He  has 
gone  to  Burke  and  Wellington  and  Palmerston  ;  he  is  reconciled  with 
Beaconsfield. 


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